In Sess We Trust
by MoonliteCrescndo
Summary: She isn't perfect. She isn't wonderful. And neither is he. This isn't about how a relationship can solve your problems, its about how you can solve your problems yourself.
1. Default Chapter

Hey.  Read, review.  Let it touch you.  It's a little deep at times, but interesting and funny at others.  Lots of internal dialogue.  Will get faster later.  Enjoy.

-MC

Do not own Inuyasha.  If I did, oh the possibilities.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

11/13/97

9:29 p.m.

Anyways—this is an interesting way of putting things.  I am very interested in the way things are put, you know.  If you have any idea about what I am referring to, please respond by reading on.

_My life is full of the crap that everyone goes through and some things that everybody doesn't go through.  I am here to tell you about it if you are willing to learn about a fourteen-year-old girl with problems like any other. Or with writing this am I to find a special bond with a million other people with the same problems?  Or must I submit to a life knowing that I, Kagome Carlton have no problems whatsoever like the other people on this planet and that anything that I write from here on in is a mystery to all mankind?  Maybe people that think they have jobs will even research this, but they really don't and are paid to read literature made by children and evaluate how the teenage mind really works.  I am really sick of these books about teenagers that make us seem really stupid or really shallow—yeah, most of us are and I know that—but research some people that aren't, okay? _

_ Excuse me for going into this "research project" in such a rash way.  I, the not shallow spokesperson for the 11.5 people in the world who aren't shallow like the rest of the population would therefore like to dedicate this to the shallow ones.  Without their meandering experiences and stupid mishaps, where would this .000000000000127% of the population be now?  I mean, that is why we were born now, right?  To have all the stupid people make the mistakes for us._

_Want to know about me?  Lets start out from the beginning—no, not that beginning-the one that I am actually a part of.  Well, in the beginning—that is a good place to start, is it not?  Now the story of a not shallow life of a child who is now the most perfect human being on the face of this earth and so on and so on.  I'm just kidding—but for those of you that think so—just keep on thinking it!  _

_4/9/99_

_6:38 p.m._

_I have had this saved on my computer for some time now.  It's the kind of thing that you want to do, but it just kind of sits there and you look at it a couple times and read it a couple times to remind yourself you really are a crazy lunatic and this is your proof.  _

_Well, the whole theory about the life of me started way back before I was even around.  People got together, the last of the not shallow kind and they decided that they should produce offspring that could maybe herd the young people of today into noble and not shallow people of tomorrow.  But of course this plan failed and here I am!!!!!!!  _

_Ha ha, no really.  My parents after being happily married for twelve years decided to have a child and here she is, throwing them into a whirlpool of new ways and living styles that you can only experience when you have a child like me.  I have no idea if my parents were prepared for the creative genius that their child really is, but I think that in the back of their minds, they planned it that way._

_Have you ever listened to books on tapes?  I mean, I love people like Dave Barry and other creative geniuses such as myself but I can't believe they pick the weirdest people to read their books on tape.  And then the readers even have enough nerve to act like they wrote this stuff by saying "my son" and "my wife" and things like that.  I mean, come on!  If you don't like your voice—live with it!  It's yours, so oh well.  I would rather listen to Dave Barry's voice than this weird guy on one of his tapes.  I was truly amazed about how shallow these people can be…or is it not shallowness but the true form of human beings—not to be happy about us in any way?  Maybe that is why models were created—I mean, why not—they got here somehow didn't they?  I wonder how one raises a model.  Do they farm them on a farm?  Or is it just they way they were born—ready to walk on the runway with seven inch heels?  No, I will not convince myself that these extremely "perfect" people were one of us, the "normal" bunch before all their stardom.  I won't believe it for a second!_

_Anyway, back to the creation of me, the genius of the entire world.  Yes, I am very humble.  See…I can even read minds now, kinda freaky, huh?  Yeah, my friend Kenneth made that one up.  Yes, I can read minds and that whole bit.  Yeah, kinda dumb, sorry Ken.  _

_8/22/00_

_10:27 p.m._

_Well, it's been a while since I have written here.  Did you know what I titled this section?  "Me Me Me."  Fascinating.  I believe I have lost the flair of my younger self, I was quite young then, and I knew not what the world was really about.  I was still naive and innocent, well more innocent than now, however innocent I still remain.  I am the most unshallow person that I know; did you know that in high school I am the only girl that refuses to wear make-up?  I am quite a little amusement to the newspapers; my name keeps cropping up in places that I don't know where they came from.  People find this like a sight to see.  They actually have tour guides that camp outside my house, to show people around and stuff.  I have a crowd awaiting my every move, seeing if I will corrupt myself or something.  _

_Ha, they barely know me.  That is why I am making this personal narrative, so I can have the world know me as I really am.  The world needs a little culture and sincerity from the world's most unshallow person in the whole world.  Hey, I said I was unshallow, not immodest, which…no, it does not mean the same thing, okay?  And to think that I actually do not own mirrors in my house.  I don't think I even watch TV that often although my face is there a lot.  _

_I dunno, I think the sight of myself is kind of scary.  _

_9/17/02_

_9:52 p.m._

_I was looking through the archives of some of my old forgotten lore and I stumbled across this little nugget, surprisingly, I was quite intelligent when I was younger, contrary to the popular belief of others.  I think it was the rumors the jealous people spread about me.  They suck.  I don't believe they have discovered that mean people suck and all go off and reproduce and make more mean people.  Goodness, get over it people and just like me for me.  Yes, you can never be like me, but hey, its something we all just have to live with, except me, of course.  Thus ending this version of me, me, me narrative for now, until I stumble across this again._

_---------------------------------_

It started the same every summer.  My mother would proclaim it "the summer of changes" and we were supposed to loose weight, exercise and eat less.  It would last a couple of weeks, where I would ride my bike on some dusty road about three times a week and just eat barely anything and loose about ten pounds.  My mother would simply go on some diet and then break it and then go back on it to only break it again.  Inevitably she would end the summer crying softly in her room—still overweight—cursing my father for dying and leaving us as such.

I would then be left to contemplate the summer alone in my room.  I would sit on the edge of my bed and wonder why we had to loose weight at all.  After many struggles with myself...attempted suicides, anorexia and bulimia (both which never worked), I accepted myself and the way I was.  My mother desperately clung onto her young adult years with the violent fervor of passing age.  She wanted to be that twenty-three year old woman who broke hearts and could wear anything to do so.  She wanted to be young and forced those ideals on me.  It was from a health standpoint, she would always say.  Don't you want to be healthy?  

I, on the other hand, being seventeen at the time, not having her life experience to think back on and fully and willingly expressing the traditional apathy of that extraordinary age—didn't care.  I liked food.  It was whom I went to when I was hurt from the outside world.  It comforted me where no boyfriend would and it would never grow tired of you.  Food wouldn't hurt your feelings or insult you.  I knew those insults.  I knew them well.  Perhaps too well at too young of an age.  But can't children be cruel?

I wasn't outrageously fat, however.  I just had that extra little bit that successfully excluded me from the most popular clicks and tank-top wearing, midriff-showing crowd in high school and therefore from the guy's radar in general.  We live in a time of ideals.  And I didn't fit the ideal of our time.  You know, the skinny, simpering model with fake breasts and artificial everything because she was most likely airbrushed in the studio.  So, I cut myself off from relationships and from people.  It would hurt me less in the long run, I assured my usual sunny disposition.  

On the outside, I was my normal self: happy and excited for the day to come.  On the inside I didn't understand why the world had to be so cruel.  I became numb because all that I now cared about was the belief of beauty that we see in beauty magazines. Yes, I had accepted my body.  But, when it comes to my body, there has always been a hole; a missing piece to the puzzle that can't be found and I think that even if I did loose weight I still wouldn't be able to find it.  

But I guess that was when it all started.  When I met the person that would change my life dramatically and is still affecting me to this day.  I sometimes joke that if I hadn't met him I would be a sad repeat on the Jerry Springer show with the theme "Women who can't keep men because they secretly suck out their souls at night" or something to that extent.  I thought boys were perhaps the root of all my problems.  

I have long ago discovered the stupidity of boys.  Not men, per say, but the boy, the teenage self.  The awkward stage as Britney stated so well, not a boy, yet not a man.  Well, in her case, it was, well, you know what I mean.  I have often pondered the thoughts of a teenage boy, and it has become a hobby of mine to figure them out. I have thus discovered there are types of this interesting creature. There is the sex driven, which is the typical guy, ranging from 12-to say, 40 (in some cases it never ends).  We all know the details, we all saw American Pie (an unfortunate movie that yes, Americans paid to see.  Even sadder that yes, I'm sure this actually happens) another type is the player.  Now, this guy is sex-driven, but as the name entails, he actually gets some.  Then there are the nerds, generally known as honor students or band members.  It's a real shame when you are in both.  And finally, the regular Joe Smoes.  The guys you usually end up dating in high school.  The legendary "Leave it to Beaver" type girls just absolutely fawn over.  Too bad all these guys are taken and if they aren't they are always looking for someone older and not you.  Unless you aren't a wallflower and should be banished from the face of the earth.

_No matter, just remember when you are out with Jock Johnny that you'll get bags under your eyes before I do.  Something about kissing and the effect it has on your body...You'll see it in nine months when it spits on your tube top sister!_

_You may be thinking, "bitter much?" But who needs guys?  My friend Kim and I have this idea going.  What if men were locked up in huge dome structures kept there for eternity, and they were only used for breeding purposes?  What do ya say?  _

_Yeah, you're right.  Then our world would cycle together and have enormous bitch weeks where we would kill the men or worse, each other!  And our movies would be overrun with the sob story of little Susie Nobody that falls in love with Jack from Dome 11 and smuggles him out dressed as a woman. (In conclusion, they will live on a secluded island off the coast of Normandy and adopt the names of Helga and Olga Pataki, becoming life partners and breeding pugs for profit.  Furthermore, Olga (once Jack from Dome 11) will strike out on his own after a tiff with Helga (once Susie Nobody) including a razor and a very unsuspecting pug.  Lets just say we're not quite sure if Helga made it.  Olga will become a traveling act, entertaining audiences everywhere like a current Hedwig and the Angry Inch or whatever.)_

_So life without guys won't work.  Also, in contemplation, we won't have the eternal scapegoat to blame everything on if we don't have boys.  I hate it when its that kind of "can't live with them, can't live without them" thing.  Damn U2 and their astute findings.  And so Kim and I figured this and thought up another plan.  What about the whole "It's raining men" theory?  Why can't we just ask Mother Nature to rain men, like some twisted "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs" happenstance?  ("Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs" by the way is a great book for kids)  After you clean up the spit from your tube top you can read it to them.  _

_Anyway, raining men is a wonderful concept.  _

_But again, you're right.  We would get the random woman's activist who is probably a lesbian (stereotypical-right?) asking Mother Nature why the heck there aren't any women falling from the sky too, if this whole thing was supposed to appease women?  Then Mother Nature would get sued and well, that would be the end of that.  Kim and I also thought about the whole lesbianship thing but then opted for our most brilliant plan yet.  _

_Forget the boys.  Who needs boys?  Boys are practice, boys are stupid, as I previously stated.  Who are boys practice for?  You got it._

_Men._

_Men are wonderful, intellectual, not penis driven and SEXY! _

_Well, you think that until you figure out all men were boys at one time and with the whole dogma "you can't teach a dog new tricks" and we're back to square one: I have long ago discovered the stupidity of boys._

So it was ironic that I met him during the summer of my seventeenth year when all these realizations were brewing around inside me, percolating in my mind.  I would be turning eighteen soon—a thought I didn't enjoy quite as much as I hoped—and I was currently sitting on the bench outside some grocery store sipping an iced tea.  It was mid afternoon and dangerously hot.  I had stupidly walked there enjoying the exercise and alone time.  

My mother had recently broken her ankle and now it was just a matter of time before I exploded because being a good girl full time didn't suit me as well as it used to.  She would at least cry seven times a day, cussing and cursing her luck.  She never cursed her klutzy-ness, something that I inherited, and being the true reason she fell in the first place.  She came home after a particularly refreshing weekend at her friend's beach house that I was coincidentally not invited to.  I was left at home to fend for myself until she came back with an ankle swollen to the size of Nebraska.  Which let me tell you, was no mean feat.  We went to the doctors and the rest, as they say, is history.

And that left me at the grocery store bench sipping iced tea.  I was currently scuffing my shoe on the pavement and minding my own business when it happened.  When I saw him it was love at first sight.  Definitely.  I fell hard and fast—both metaphorically and literally.  The iced tea slipped from my hands and the glass bottle shattered over my sandal-clad feet.  Bleeding, I stood, and collapsed when some glass pierced my skin where it had somehow wedged itself into my shoe.  Well, I would have collapsed if the gorgeous man didn't catch me, that is.  I felt light headed—which could have been the loss of blood—but I attributed it to the concerned face of the man I had fallen madly in love with in mere seconds.  

Which was insane especially from the whole rant I just had about the stupidity of boys.  And men, coincidentally.  Now, I must own to you that I have thought about man for the future.  In contemplating certain traits in which I would like to find in my mate, I came across a certain, --delicately put--quality, in which I could not tolerate in any circumstance.  Give me an insensitive jerk anytime!  Bring on a lad with a bad temper!  Don't forget to include unattractive in the looks department as well.  Any of these are tolerable-but a lack of intelligence—never.  It's horrific.  It's insane.  It's bloody well intolerable.  

Coming to this conclusion has come from many personal experiences with the intelligent deficient.  Now, I must clarify.  When I use this term I do not in anyway mean the mentally disabled.  I am speaking of those annoyingly smart people who have no common sense or real intelligence.  Intelligence, to me, by definition is: Knowing something, whether from books or other areas, understanding the information, allowing time to process the information, able to make coherent thoughts about the information, able to make coherent thoughts that are not simply a rehash of the teacher's/book's/information source's lecture, and able to apply this newly acquired knowledge to your own life and experiences in a straightforward and un-arrogant manner.  My definition explained, I believe that being unintelligent by no definition means you aren't smart.  I have met many smart people who were unable to intelligently form their own opinions and shape their own worldview.  I also find that this particular trait leads to most of the other intolerable traits such as: arrogant/self-centered, greedy/materialistic, selfish, shallow, close-minded etc.  

So if I believed this with every fiber of my being, how could I fall in love with this man without even knowing if he possessed these qualities?  As he gracefully picked me up and drove me to the hospital I knew in my heart that he couldn't not be 'The One.'  Little was said because without his arms around me my brain was now processing the pain.  I was bleeding horrendously all over his car—a Lexus I dully noted.  But he didn't seem to mind much even though my nose was tickling with the wonderful scent of the new car smell.  He would occasionally smile at me and touch my hand in a reassuring gesture.  

I swooned.

Which wasn't exactly what I should have done at the moment for I groaned when pain lanced through my feet again.  When we got to the hospital he picked me up again—though god knows how for I probably weighed more than he did—and he didn't put me down until got to a bed in ER.  Since I didn't have any identification on me he used his own insurance card for me.  Which, in my right state of mind, would have thoroughly confused me because the nurses and doctors suddenly seemed more than willingly to helping any way possible.  I was treated immediately and the man stayed by me the whole time, holding my hand in a way that both melted my heart and warmed my soul.

I went to sleep dreaming of his golden eyes and long, white hair.  Which was an amazing feat because I was and still am deathly afraid of hospitals in every sense of the word.  

_Periodically, I think about death.  I think of where I am going to go, how it's going to feel, if I will know if there is a God, if life is really worth living if we are going to die anyway.  What do we have to look forward to?  Afterlife?  Eternal life?  Eternal damnation?  Nothingness?  Why is death so scary? Is it because death is simply the unknown?  Because it is something we all dread, the ending of our lives on earth? Whatever death brings, it brings us with it, silencing even those who speak the loudest.  _

_Everything was so old and worn out.  It was sunken in and in some places it was completely swollen and bruised.  I could hardly see what I desperately wanted and needed to see: my grandmother's face.  My cousins lifelessly fed her ice cream that didn't go in her mouth but dribbled down her lips.  I cried as I clung to my mother, too young to understand what was going on, yet old enough to understand that something was happening.  When I left her it would be the last time that I would ever see my grandmother again.  That night my mother received a phone call.  And that night, in my mother's arms, my grandmother died.  I was six._

_6/27/95_

_2:43 a.m._

_It hurts so much.  So much pain.  So much heartache.  I want to rip out my chest and hold my heart in my hands to see it dying there.  Doesn't anyone care?  Doesn't anyone understand what I am feeling?  He is gone, damn it!  He's gone!  My father, my rock, the person who I rely on the most is gone.  Forever.  My best friend.  My everything that I wanted to emulate and become when I grew up.  Taken from me before his time, before my time was up with him!  He can't leave me when I haven't learned to drive with him yet.  I haven't had him interview a potential boyfriend or walk me down the isle.  Why did I have to see him in his weakest state, lying on the pristine sheets where I had just fed him breakfast the day before?  He had looked better.  He was smiling again.  Was he just being brave for me?  Why did you leave me?  Why did you go?  I take it back.  My heart is ripped out and it is in my hand as I watch it die.  As I watched you die.  _

In the morning I awoke to an empty room, well, no people but numerous flowers rested around on any available space.  The nearest one had a card, it read: 

I'll be back around 10:30.  I'm bringing some iced tea (plastic bottle) and a few magazines, books and whatever for you.  Wait up for me,

_Love,_

_Inuyasha_

Inuyasha.  So that was his name.  Love Inuyasha.  I certainly did love him.

At 10:29 he strolled into my room with enough treats to feed an army of sick patients and more magazines and books than I would ever need.  When we started talking like old friends over certain movies, celebrities and general gossip I should have known.  I should have known when he knew exactly what to bring to make any girl feel better.  But I didn't.  I was too in love with this seemingly perfect man to even begin to process this information.  He was funny, sweet, warm and caring.  He reminded me of a summer breeze; always there at the right moment to stave the heat, but the breeze still left you warm and comfortable.  When he got up to leave he kissed the side of my mouth in a gentle and compassionate kiss. He would be back tomorrow.  

We had talked for so long I hadn't noticed it was almost two o'clock.  Blast!  My mother must be so worried.  I called her and she clucked around me like the mother hen she was.  I told her of my savior, Inuyasha, and she was delighted.  She couldn't drive over to visit me because she had her cast on the right foot, but I told her I would be back tomorrow afternoon.  

When I did go back home, Inuyasha was more than helpful, he was a godsend.  Oh, how I loved that man.  He brought us groceries and helped my mother and I around the house since we were both invalids now.  And even after I had fully recovered he became a regular fixture in our living room, his white hair splayed across the black couch making a beautiful contrast.  With Inuyasha, our home was a happy home and he always seemed to have his head thrown back in a fit of laughter.  My mother wouldn't sniffle or cry anymore.  She gave up on the plan for loosing weight and she didn't seem to mind so much.  I was happy.

And Inuyasha had his cold moments too.  There would be times he would storm into the house and sit and brood for hours at a time.  Neither Mother nor I could get him to talk about it and we figured it might be something at home that was bothering him.  Other times where he would become passionate about a subject and once we argued until past midnight, my mother sporadically banging on the wall from her bedroom if we got too loud.  I was more in love with him than ever and it never crossed my mind why he seemed to always come over to my house when he never even spoke of his.  College was swiftly approaching and the growing urgency to tell Inuyasha of my love was getting stronger.  

A week before I was to leave we were walking along some path near my house.  It was night and since it was still summer, not too cool out either.  We were walking hand in hand as we usually did, just enjoying each other's company and the refreshing night air.  My heart thudded painfully in my chest and I knew my perfect moment had come.  The perfect moment to express our love to each other and share our first kiss.  My first kiss ever, too.

"I love you," I whispered as I turned to him.  He chuckled, squeezing my hand.  

"I love you too."  Platonically, he was saying.  I had another go.

"No, I really love you."  His golden eyes were locked into mine.  But instead of a deep, everlasting love I wanted to see, I only saw a hurt and a sadness.  

"I know," he whispered back.  I waited for him to return the sentiments but he continued walking, rubbing his thumb up and down my hand.

"Inuyasha…?"  I wanted to cry.  Had I read him wrong?  Was he going to hurt me like all the other men?  Why was he doing this to me?

"Kagome, I do love you.  As much as I can.  But it can't be anything more than friendship, I'm sorry."

"Is it another woman?"  He chuckled again and brought his lips to my hand, kissing it gently.

"Sometimes I wish it was."

I wasn't stupid, although my previous actions seemed to mark me as stupid.  I had found my perfect man, sweet, caring and intelligent and I was head over heels in love with him—hell, my mother loved him and I didn't remember Murphy's Law.

Of course he was gay.

"Then can we find our perfect men together?  I don't want to be without you."  

He smiled and gave me a glorious hug.  My heart fluttered and I still loved him utterly but there was nothing either of us could do about it.  

"Of course," he whispered against my hair and kissed my forehead.  

The rest of the week I busied myself with packing and last minute shopping sprees for my mother couldn't go with me.  Her cast was to come off soon, so Inuyasha helped me arrange everything.  But my heart still ached for him.  The night before I left Inuyasha invited me to a dinner t his house to meet his family.  I dressed in a nice black dress that was supposed to accentuate my bosom and lessen my waist, neither of which I was to believe it did but I wore it anyway.  As the cab pulled up to the house, or mansion, rather, I succumbed to the feeling of dread in my stomach.  His family knew of his sexual orientation, but I still didn't feel right being there.  I was an overweight normal girl from the suburbs that just happened to hurt herself at the right time.  Why did I have to be thrown in the mix with these people I barely knew and probably hated me already?  Inuyasha had told me very little except that it was just him, his older brother and his father that lived in this beautiful house.

"Welcome to my humble abode," he said after paying the taxi and our heated argument over him doing so.  However, humble was nothing close to it and I laughed at the sad attempt at normalcy.  But my laugh was shaky and Inu gave me a swift kiss on the cheek before I went inside.  He led me through numerous halls of expensive artifacts until we finally arrived at an ornate dining room where a jovial looking older man sat deep in conversation with a disgruntled younger man.  Inuyasha smiled and squeezed my hand before he cleared his throat.  But before he could say anything, the younger man—obviously Inu's older brother, spoke.

"You're late" he sneered.

I blushed and almost stammered an apology but Inu beat me to it.

"Don't mind him, he's an ass."  The younger man dragged his eyes over my body before it obviously displeased him and went on with his sneering.  "This is Kagome Carlton, father.  Kagome this is my father, and my brother, Sesshomaru."  

The older man got up from his seat and gave me a short and comforting hug.  What a nice man.  Obviously he doesn't care about the social class difference.

"What a nice friend, Inuyasha."

Sesshomaru simply nodded dismissively in my direction and began to eat his dinner.  So much for thinking that the comforting atmosphere extended to the whole family.  What a strange fellow…

Dinner went surprisingly well and I felt myself fall in love with Inuyasha all over again as I saw him in his own environment for the first time.  It was obvious, however, that Sesshomaru was the favored son.  But Mr. Kingston handled them well.  Where warmth and emotion was what he used with Inuyasha, simultaneously he used strategy and a stoic business-like manner with Sesshomaru.  It was interesting to watch the family dynamic that had sunk into a sort of unimportant habit and tradition of this bachelor pad.  Sesshomaru didn't stay for dessert, mumbled an excuse and a gruff apology and left us alone.  I didn't really mind at all.  He didn't participate much in the conversation anyway.

Finally I went home.  I laid awake in bed thinking about all the things I was going to miss at college.  My eighteenth birthday had come and gone without a second thought and I hardly wanted the extra responsibility of being an adult in the eyes of the law.  I wished for the carefree days of childhood, when I could simply play away the hours without the nonsense that plagued my thoughts now.  All I longed for at the moment was the past—and Inuyasha.  We had become closer but I still loved him.  Perhaps college would do me some good, distract me from him.  Get me away from this unrequited love.  

Sighing, I tried to sleep with the jumble of emotions rolling around in my stomach.  Would I fit in?  Would I make friends?  Would I be hurt?  Would anyone care for me?

_10/3/02_

_12:33 a.m._

_No one cares.  This is a surprising statement to finally understand as a teenager.  We are all wrapped up in our own little worlds to be concerned with anybody else.  It's quite amazing how marriages don't dissipate more often.  They already do enough.  No one is truly interested, truly concerned with each other's lives.  They have their family, and that is all they need.  Is that true?  In America, where we are the richest in the world, not care about each other?  Sometimes it is hard to tell.  But I think they do.  There are those who have a genuine concern for others.  I wish to emulate these people.  It's easy to get caught up in our meaningless, consumer-driven lives.  It's easy.  It's simple.  It's hard to have depth.  Hard to have meaning.  Hard to not seek reassurance.  Hard to be your own person.  It's hard to live.  Life is not easy no matter who you are.  Life is complex.  Life is harsh.  Life is beautiful.  And no one cares.  Everyone is so busy to even stop and realize life.  People forget to live. And when we all become fertilizer, we will have regrets.  Maybe you didn't play with your kids.  Maybe you cheated on your husband or maybe you worked too much.  Whatever it was, the reason is because you didn't get life.  You could be so much more than this.  Live._

_"The figures around me weren't people, but shop dummies, painted to resemble people and propped up in attitudes counterfeiting life" (Plath 116)._

So many unanswered questions.  I wish I could believe people cared.  But it was too hard.  College scared me.  Even if I was only over the hill and about forty-five minutes away, I would miss the comfort and security of home, my own little world.

I mean, I wanted to move on and grow up.  But another part of me didn't want to step away from that zone of childhood.  I didn't want to jump into that dark abyss.  I didn't want to loose myself.  Hugging the sheets closer I tried not to ponder too much about the fact that I wouldn't be sleeping in my bed anymore.

Inuyasha's face swam into my view and I finally dropped off into a dreamless sleep.  I had my whole life ahead of me.  But all I could do now was rest, and let one day come at a time.

One day at a time…


	2. One Day At A Time

Hello.

Thank you for the reviews.  I have enjoyed them.

As for a certain flame about not liking this story…I would like to point out that this IS an Alternate Universe fanfiction, set in America.  If that is not something you can grasp, please don't read this.  Furthermore, I was trying to capture a real woman instead of these dangerously beautiful and unreal women in anime.  No one looks like that in real life, and this is what I was trying to portray in Kagome.  And as for Inuyasha being gay…this is my fanfic, so I can do whatever I want with the characters.  You simply have the choice to read them or not.  It is the ultimate unrequited love, being in love with someone who not only does not love you like that but also cannot love you like that.  And as for the barb that this was written about me—was totally uncalled for.  I am a writer, I write what I know.  But when you attack my work, please just attack my work.  It is not necessary to wound me or insult me in any manner.  I appreciate your input but keep your criticisms to my work.

Thank you to everyone else who has enjoyed this.  It does mean a lot to me.  

And for a warning: this is alternate universe fic, with ooc and other abominations such as those that our lovely Inuyasha creator NEVER figured into the manga/show.  That is why I am here.  

Now please read on with your own risk.  

Review and enjoy,

-MC

Oh, and as for the dates, don't mind them.  Kagome is writing this from the present, but she is telling you sort of a prequel before it starts in the present again.  So all these dates are from things she is piecing into the story that "she" has written and so the dates have no relevance to the actual date of the story.  I'm having fun writing these so I hope you enjoy the little piece ins too!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_12/13/99_

3:29 a.m.

I have this habit of staying up late at night in my bed and thinking about all the stupid stuff I have ever done.  Like the time I yelled at my mother so much I made her cry.  She wouldn't speak to me for a week.  And it just started over some stupid little thing that I don't even remember anymore.  Or the time I slipped and fell in the mud when a really cute junior walked by.  I was just sitting eating lunch and it was time to go to class.  It had rained that day, but sitting under the gazebo was completely dry.  It was a normal lunch with nothing different.  I finished eating and I got up to go throw away my garbage in the garbage can near the side entrance of the school.  And then he walked by.  The cutest junior I had ever seen in my life.  I didn't know him or his name but I was a freshman and he was gorgeous.  And then as fate would have it, or the gods, or whoever controls my destiny…he looks at me right when I loose my footing in a spot of mud.  Down I go, creating a huge spat! Sound and results in me covered in mud.  My pants, hair, anything that was previously clean is now covered in mud.  The cute junior helps me up, along with his friend, but I could tell they were laughing inside and just waiting to get out of my presence to laugh for real.  I hate it when people do it.  I would be hurt if he laughed in my face, but at least then I would have seen it.  Or the time I sprained my ankle at freshman orientation and had to be on crutches the whole time.  Or the time I said "thank you" to a guy who said yes to go to Sadie's with me.  Gosh, I have such a huge list I can't even begin to write down them all.         What about when I declared my love to a guy in the library, or asked someone out through the newspaper or totally fell in love with someone I thought was straight…

Suddenly this game isn't as fun as I thought it was before…

---------------------------------------------------

I relaxed in my daily life at college.  The work was hard but I had nothing to be worried about.  I thrived there.  Inuyasha visited me once in a while but the pang in my heart lessened a bit.  I saw my mother regularly—at least once a month.  A year past.  And then two.  And then three.  I didn't really make many friends, deciding to be a recluse in my room and study instead.  There were men, but none compared to Inuyasha.  And I guess it was safe that way.  No real risk.  He made me happy enough.  I had a few kisses here and there—some fluke occurrence.  

----------------------------------------------------

_5/24/99_

_7:34 p.m._

Sigh again.  As for the details, they are sexual details.  No, I did not sleep with him, but what I did still makes me feel a little slutty.  I don't want you to think less of me because of this, so don't read it if you are kinda weird about sexual stuff. Okay, honesty.  I've been on dates before, and everything.  But I haven't ever kissed anyone before. Ya know?  I mean, I know it's pathetic for someone my age to say that but I guess I am just like "Never Been Kissed" or something.  I mean, it's hard to explain.  I get really shy around guys I like and I just totally turn off.  Sooo...basically he was my first kiss.  And what a bad kiss it was.  He immediately starts off with his tongue down my throat and I have no idea how to fuckin do anything.  I mean, I guess I caught on later but it was just awful.  And on top of it I had fuckin gum in my mouth so I had to stop and take it out.  How nice for your first kiss, huh?  And it didn't end there.  I had my period, and he wanted to feel me down there and I said no...cuz I mean, gross!  But whatever.  It was my first time in such a sexual situation.  And then he totally feels up my chest and he does it soooo bad...its like he is soo rough.  I mean, being gentle goes a long way, ya know?  Shit...so then I feel the THING on my frickin thigh and I mean, I can't just ignore it...so I go ahead and grab it and rub it through his pants.  Not only is it fuckin small...but we inevitably end up in his car and the next thing I know is I am giving him a hand job and I feel totally stupid.  I mean, I am so bad at it and I have no idea what I am doing.  Sheesh.  He didn't force me or anything.  I mean, he didn't want to put it away, I could tell...but he probably would have if I asked him.  So there I am, rubbing up and down and I have no idea what is going on and I just want to finish the job and have him be done.  But I can't!  So...I stop at one point and he starts finishing it himself.  I can't believe it!  He starts masturbating while I am in the car and he asks me to kiss his neck and suck on it in this way that I do that he somehow likes.  And then he tells me when he is ready to, ya know...and I just move over to the other side of the car.  God, it was the worst feeling in the world.  Not only did I NOT like this guy as much as I thought I did...but he had to finish himself.  I was so ashamed and sick.  And that was only our second date...

-----------------------------------------------------

I even lost my virginity in those three years.  It was a lovely looking pre-med that I fancied.  His name was Miroku and for once I didn't mind his lecherous hands and our in clandestine meetings.  I lost my virginity up against a wall in some janitor closet with my skirt hiked up to my hips so no skin was revealed.  I must admit that he got far more pleasure out of the experience than I did and immediately after he pulled out of me I told him I wanted to just be friends.  I'm not quite sure if he was upset or not but I didn't really think he would be overjoyed in the notion of having me as a girlfriend.  No one else wanted me, why would he?  We both used each other to some extent and that was the end of that.  However, he surprisingly stayed my friend and it wasn't until years later—when he was extraordinarily drunk that he admitted to me I was his first as well.  

I met Sango also, a woman who became both my greatest friend and my greatest envoy.  She was perfectly built and always had a steady flow of boyfriends.  We were all surprised later when she brought home Kouga, a man she met vacationing in Georgia (though why anyone would vacation in Georgia is beyond me) and was the chef at the resort she stayed at.  It amazed us because Sango had left with another of her series of men but Kouga was different.  He didn't worship her and it was funny because Sango didn't worship him either.  They were equals and were married after Sango graduated.  But Kouga was a pleasant addition to our group while we were still in college.  And he was one hell of a cook!  Man, the dinner parties we would have.  Inuyasha was included in our little group too and it was as if we were always meant to be together—the five of us.

Summer vacations were the same with my mother but crying was regularly heard in her rooms throughout the year now.  She was so lonely and unhappy.  Everything made her angry and upset and when I was forced to buy my own apartment near school because I couldn't get student housing, I didn't even have the summers with her anymore.  And it was hard to admit, but I relished the time alone.  Like before when I wanted to huddle in my childhood I now celebrated in my freedom.  I was twenty-one.  

As my major became more specialized I was forced to compete for an internship everyone coveted—one that not only paid well but could set you o the perfect career path for the future.  A chance to work at Charmander Industries, the leading company in plant disease research and prevention.  Oh how desperately I wanted that job.

-----------------------------------------------------------

6/19/98

2:43 p.m.

I thought of taking tests as some kind of war.  When I didn't know the answer, I had to sacrifice that question and count it as wrong.  Just like if you sacrifice one soldier for the good of the whole army.  A perfect battle was a hundred percent, no men missing or questions missed.  I soon realized that I would never be a good general because one hundred percents were not common.  I made sacrifices, even little ones, for the good of the whole test.  And thus I received good marks.  But a general does not receive marks, and his sacrifices are not merely questions, they are men.  

-----------------------------------------------------

And today, during my senior and final year in college, I was to hear a lecture from one of the top scientists, along with the lawyer who handled all copyright and infringement laws with the company and what they were researching.  The scientist was my hero, a one Kaede Carpenter that was the woman I would die trying to emulate.  She was the driving force behind the research and had major participation in all the breakthroughs of disease prevention.  She gave hope to the few woman of the field and I just about died when she spoke.  But when she finished I did not rush out to meet her in the entry hall of one of the smaller lecture rooms.  Instead I was one of the few people to stay rooted in their seat as a beautiful but stoic man walked to the podium.  

Sesshomaru.

I hadn't thought back to that dinner so many years ago and whenever I returned to Inu's house, Sesshomaru was never present at the overly large dining table.

I glanced around the room and noticed that it was mostly woman who remained and I was sure it wasn't the "riveting" speech he gave that kept them there.  In fact he seemed quite bored with the prospect of even being here that I almost left myself.  I mean, he had one of the most interesting jobs, in my opinion, and he spoke so impassionedly.  All right, he was an amazing speaker—words flowed from his mouth and he kept his gaze on the audience instead of on his papers.  He spoke with knowledge and confidence and I knew he was obviously the best money could buy.  His words drew you in—an intricate tapestry of words woven to precision.  But his eyes gave him away.  There seemed to be nothing behind them, as if he was simply describing a two-bedroom apartment instead of his life's work.  Afterwards I stood a little bit away as the girls swamped him, asking questions not having to do with anything he said or went over in his presentation.  He answered every one of them with a clam air but his voice had an edge of annoyance in it.  It seemed to be saying "whatever."

---------------------------------------------------

3/5/00

10:15 a.m.

Whatever.  It is one of those great, multi-use words that can apply to just about anything.  Try it in a random conversation sometime.  It can just fit right in anywhere.  You don't even have to explain your reasoning with "whatever," because there usually is no reasoning!  It's used best when you are aggravated and want to move on in the conversation (or out of the conversation!).  Oh the joys of blowing someone off with this infamous slight of speech.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever.

---------------------------------------------------

I somehow caught his eye over the din and I smiled and waved a little.  At first he glanced away rather quickly and then turned back again, recognition dawning on his cold features.  He motioned for me to wait in that arrogant manner as he excused himself from the chattering crowd of woman that stood stunned at his hasty departure and then glared daggers at me.  I smiled sheepishly at them as Sesshomaru put an altogether friendly hand upon my shoulder and led me out to the parking lot.

"Thank you," he said, which surprised me.  But it should have, I barely knew him.  

"Don't thank me yet.  I might be dead in the morning if they get their way.  Then I might regret it."

"Yes, well, I did tell them you were my girlfriend, so just enjoy it while you can."

He chuckled at my look of complete shock and anger but he spoke to stave the rant I was about to produce.  And the steam coming out of my ears didn't exactly help either for I was ready to pounce on him and show him what enjoying life really meant for that little comment.  Like I needed people to lie for me about our relationships.  Pffft.  Shut up conscience.  

"All I said was that I had a previous engagement to attend to and they looked at you as such."  I felt relieved. 

"I don't want to imagine what would have happened if I really were…your…" I drifted off, feeling highly embarrassed because I barely knew him and he was smugly smirking at me.  At that moment all I wanted to do was wipe that little smirk off his face for setting me up for a huge blush so well.  Only Inuyasha could do that.

"How about some coffee with an old friend?"  I snorted most unladylike and replied.

"Such good old friends we are.  If I remember correctly I believe you snubbed me back then."  He smirked again and led me to his car.

"That, my dear friend, was perhaps a mistake."  

He then opened the door for me and I got in, slightly confused and a little red from a blush.  What?  What was this?  

God, I'm so stupid.

--------------------------------------------------------

Recently I had been in a weird mood.  Me, being the constantly shy girl around guys that I like, I kinda noticed a huge change.  Now keep in mind that all the events in this tale are completely true.  And keep in mind that I've liked this guy since freshman year.  (Now a junior in high school)

**Monday(night)**

I suddenly get the idea to ask Hiten to the Christmas dance, I call my friend Kim to prepare me.  I go call him.  He takes like on hour to get on the phone (well, two minutes) and I first distract him with asking for vocab, which wasn't going to be due for a week.  And then I spring into the question.

"Would you like to go to the Christmas dance with me?"

"Wow.  umm.  When is it?"  He answers.  

"I dunno, two, three weeks away?"   Come on, Hiten, I'm on pins and needles here!

"Well, sure, I'd love to go with you."  (I silently freak out)  "You don't think it will be during…"

"No, I don't think they'd put it during D.C." I answered, reading his mind.  He was my friend after all.  Well, kinda friend.

"Oh, okay.  Well I have to check the date but I'd love to go with you."

"Cool.  I'll talk to you tomorrow," I answer, trying to hide my excitement.

"Okay, bye."

As the phone turns off, I proceed to scream and do the normal girl thing—call all my friends and tell all the bloody details.  And they all screamed too.  That night I tried on my dress (I brought it last year for whenever) and I dreamed of the perfect night…

**Tuesday (Morning)**

My friend Kim hugs me as I arrive.  She seems more excited than I am.  She says,

"When I see Hiten, I'm going to scream and hug him!"  My face proceeds to get a bright red as you-know-who walks in…

"Hi Hiten," Kim yells as he strolls into the library.  I decide to do the same. I mean, I am going to the Christmas dance with the guy!

"Hi Hiten!" he does a half turn.  Looks at me, stops and turns around to talk. Why is he doing this?

"The dance is on the fourteenth, right?"  I nod as Kim nods vigorously behind his head.  "Well, theres a problem." 

The smile that was on my face fades.  My friends slowly turn away and give us some privacy.

"What?" I say, trying not to cry already. 

"Well, I have to sing at this concert for the Children's Hospital."

"Oh," my heart silently breaking.  It feels like he just gave it to the dog next door it's little…but it has big teeth.

"Is there anyone else you can go with?" he asks, shrugging.

"No, its okay," I don't really answer, trying not to cry.  No, because I only wanted to go with you.

"This sucks," he walks into the library with his shoulders hunched.  My friends appear immediately and I say,

"I think I'm gonna cry." I don't thought, I get a little watery.  Everyone consoles me by saying things like "he said yes!" and " if he was going to the dance he would be going with you" and all that.  They leave, and me, having this period off, proceed to the library and sit down.  I just want to call my mom.  She was excited too…I walk by my counselor's office and I have to talk to her.  I tell her the whole story, trying not to cry.  She consoles me too, but I want to talk to my mom.  She lets me all my mom on her phone as she leaves for a meeting.  The tears flow freely when talking to my mommy.  She tells me I should go to the concert and she'll check it out (she works for the Children's hospital).  Feeling a little better, I go to the science lab, do some homework and then talk to my friend Melissa.  I then proceed to screw up everyone's day by convincing Melissa to ask a guy to the dance she likes.  He just shuts her down, but he is a jerk anyway.  I had the worst day.  I failed a quiz, could barely eat lunch and on top of it, when I got home there was a message from my mom saying that she had called and they didn't know about a concert with the children's hospital.  Now I was faced with the prospect that Hiten may have lied to me.  To make it worse it was an answer to some thoughts I had all day.  Everyone said that at least he said yes, but there was a little voice in the back of my mind.  Well, yeah, but he was lying.  He didn't really want to go. 

God! Having Hiten say yes was proof that life is fair sometimes and good people get good things.  And when he said he couldn't go it was back to reality.  I don't know what came over me this week, but yeah, I was different.  I had courage.  I was brave.  I asked Hiten to the Christmas dance.  Anyway, I cried myself to sleep.

**Wednesday**

Did I happen to mention that Hiten's father worked at my school?  And he is a teacher.  And he is my teacher.  Yeah, well I was dreading that class.  Anyway, I saw Hiten first and second period and so at second I had enough courage to talk to him when he was alone by the window.

"So, whom are you singing for again?"  Yeah, I just dove right in there.

"The Children's Hospital."

"Oh, cool.  I would like to go.  My mom could probably get tickets because she works there."  I sigh.  He smells and looks really good today.  But he looks good everyday…

"Cool."

"Who is it for, like the kids or something?"  I inquire. I feel like a reporter.

"It's for the donors.  We are in some tent in the parking lot."

"Oh.  So I probably couldn't go since I'm not a donor?"

"I dunno," he shrugs.

For the short of it, he gives me his calendar.  I could have almost hugged him with happiness.  I mean, he couldn't be lying!

**Thursday**

My friend Melissa wanted to see him so we meet in the library.  Hiten s there of course, on a computer, probably doing his work for his D.C. trip next week.  He is going to miss a whole week of school!  I asked him about the calendar and he said he forgot.  Melissa said he seemed really mad at himself about it.  Later, at about four, I am about to leave when I see Hiten.  He is at the computer again and I throw caution to the wind and tell him that I like him.  He says I'm brave to tell him.  And he goes back to computer.  Could he be that unaffected?  Or did he just not get it?  Or did it just not sink in?  I a attempting to make my dramatic exit when the library alarm goes off.  Darn it!  The librarian is a temp and she doesn't know me well enough that I wouldn't ever steal anything so she checks my bags.  Nice.  There goes dramatic exit, Kagome.  I go to the locker area and proceed to throw up.

**Friday**

I would think that he would be nice enough to have an answer, but no such luck.  I am stuck here wondering. Since it's his last day here and all.  But maybe a week to think about it (if he thinks about it) will be good?

**Saturday**

So here I am stuck thinking and worrying about him.  Asking my mom how many hours it takes to D.C.  Hoping he doesn't find someone there.  Knowing that he is extremely shy.  And writing this hoping and wishing for an answer.  A good answer.  To prove that life sometimes cuts a girl a break for something she really cares about.

Reality check: it doesn't.

--------------------------------------------------------

We chatted in the car casually, sticking to the easy topic--the weather, his job, my major and books.  He reads a lot, he explained to me, because it helped him when writing and delivering his speeches and cases. 

"You must win most of your cases if you work at Charmander."

"Yes, I am accustomed to winning the things I want."  It was quite obvious that he was totally accustomed to always getting what he wanted and told him so.

"But only reason is because you are you, though."

"What, rich, successful and devilishly handsome?"

I started to chuckle but laughed even more at his totally serious face.

"Oh yes, Sesshomaru, those help too."  He didn't seem to register why I was laughing so hard which made me laugh even more.

"Is such arrogance typical in your family?  Inuyasha thinks he is god's gift to humanity too."  I started laughing again but stopped at the expression on his face: utterly grave.

"I'm sure you agree with that though."  How he knew I was never really sure.  But something in his eyes told me that I could tell him anything even though his outward appearance told me to never mention it again.  I was confused and I rested a hand on his knee.  We were at a stop so Sesshomaru was able to bring his full attention to me.

"You know exactly how I feel about him, don't you?  You know I've loved him desperately from the beginning, don't you Sesshomaru?"

The light turned green and he didn't answer me immediately.  After about a minute or two he placed his hand gently on mine, brushing his thumb over the top just like Inuyasha did the night I told him I loved him.  His hand covered my own completely, as if trying to shelter it from the harsh realities of life.

"Yes," he murmured, "I know exactly how you feel." He parked the car in front of an expensive looking apartment building.  "The best place for coffee," he smiled half-heartedly and led me hand in hand to his rooms.  Coming from anyone else I would have thought it was a sex invite but not from him.  I suddenly felt too comfortable around him to even imagine complicating it with sex.  And he knew how I felt; I needed someone to share this with.

He fixed me a cup of coffee as I explored the apparent bachelor pad.  Well, that is, there was no feminine touch.  But other than that it was neat and immaculate—completely perfect.  There was enough art to say it was moderately decorated and he even had his CD's, books and DVD's arranged in alphabetical order.  I would have questioned his sexual orientation at that moment if I didn't already hear about some of his sexual escapades.  A little regretfully now, he was Inuyasha and my favorite topic of amusement for he used to be quite wild in his youth.  He was still cold and untouchable, yes, but understandably, Sesshomaru took full advantage of his arousing appearance.  Hell, took advantage is an understatement, I'm sure the man holds records somewhere at being the most successful sexual predator in all time.   So, it was a little weird to hear this side of him that knew what I felt.

"Who is she?"  I asked once we were settled on his amazingly comfortable couch, me with my back leaning against one arm and his back against the other.  He looked more approachable now in his own apartment then he ever looked in the mansion.  The one time I saw him that is.

"An untouchable woman who could never love me the way I love her."

"Why?"

"Because I don't deserve her."  I wanted to exclaim that I was sure this wasn't true but the look in his eyes shown with a sadness not unlike that which I knew resided in my own.

"When did you meet her?"

"A long time ago.  But I knew of her before then.  In my dreams."  I wanted to laugh then.  Perhaps cry too.  He was older than me by a few years.  I was sure he was almost twenty-eight.  I was only twenty-one then and I had long ago given up on my perfect man.  No one could ever replace Inuyasha in my hear and no one had to.  Sesshomaru was almost thirty and he still believed in his dream woman.  Like a little child or lovesick teenager he still dreamed about his one true love.  It made me like him more.  Especially after everything I've heard about his sex life, it made me realize that perhaps he didn't get everything or win everything he wanted.  Which sort of disregarded everything that I used to use as material for our fun Sesshomaru bashings.  Which at his evident kindness to me gradually made me more and more guilty.  

"Have you ever tried anything with her?"  He lackadaisically smiled at me as if to say that it was much harder than it seems.  If he didn't want to tell me all the particulars it was fine by me.  

I was suddenly struck with the idea that perhaps he had never done this before.  This whole inviting someone over bit.  Which was ridiculous, I mean, he had to have sex somewhere…and didn't he have his own friends?  But it would explain the constant shake of his leg and his incessant need to fiddle with the pillow laying across his stomach.

"Do I make you that nervous, Sesshomaru?"  His eyes immediately darted to mine.  Yes.  He had never done this before, I decided.

"No.  But I don't usually find myself in the company of one of my brother's friends."

Oh.  That could be it too.

"Why, I thought you rather enjoyed our little rendezvous, Sesshomaru.  I'm hurt to be referred to as simply Inu's dear friend."

"Are you being facetious or do you just wish him to call you something infinitely more dear?"

That was a little touchy.  Especially in the silence we were just conducting ourselves in for the past half hour.  Comfortable silence.  I was being facetious.  Well, then…

"I'm sorry to intrude then.  Perhaps this friend of your brother should leave."

I got up to go but was stopped at the door by his hand upon my shoulder.  

"Kagome, I'm sorry.  I was deep in thought earlier and you startled me.  It is not every day you meet someone with the same troubles as yourself.  Especially someone…such as you."

I sighed and closed the door and turned to him.  His face was close to mine and I could feel his breath fanning across my lips, warming them.

"I understand, but I really should be going.  I have to work on that internship application if I want to get into your company, you know."

He smiled slightly and nodded his head.

"But of course.  Bring it by me tomorrow and I will check over all your statistics and do your interview right here."

"Don't I get interviewed by a scientist or something?"

Why was he doing this?  Just because we are kind of friends now?  Or whatever we are.  Confidants?  

"You forget, Kagome, that I had to get a doctorate in bio-engineering to be able to be as successful at my job as I am in my cases."

"Yes I know but—"

"Mrs. Carpenter doesn't conduct any interviews and the only privilege I am offering you is the fact that your interview will be here instead of at the office."

I was about to object when he opened the door and pushed me out with a hand on my back.

"Now get yourself out of here and present me with something glorious that will amaze and astound me.  Then I will have to hire you on the spot."

I smiled at him and was almost down the stairs when he poked his head around the door and yelled, 

"Five o'clock.  Don't be late.  And wear something semi-nice.  I'm going to feel like going out to dinner afterwards and I guess you can come too."

"Hardy har har, Sesshomaru.  You are a crack up."  I said, rolling my eyes as I walked down the stairs, which was highly unbeneficial since he couldn't see them anyway.  And I almost slipped.  

I stayed up late writing some incredible piece of bullshit that actually impressed Sesshomaru, for being an all-nighter, he mentioned.  Dinner was at some casual place and we just sat and talked about nothing in particular.  I did notice, however, the very obvious stares I was getting by being in the company of such a gorgeous man.  They were most likely wondering why he was with me, for all the woman out there.  It made me laugh though when I realized Sesshomaru was so engrossed in his dinner and our friendly conversation to glance at anyone and a selfish part of me loved the attention he was bestowing on me.  

And after that first Tuesday night, every Tuesday night without fail, Sesshomaru and I would eat at our restaurant at the same table and banter about nothing at all.  I ended up getting the internship even though Sess had promised me he didn't pull any strings for me.  I worked there all senior year and Kaede and I became great friends.  So naturally, after graduation I was offered a job that paid extremely well and kept me close to home.  I took a new apartment halfway between work and home so I could see my mother as often as possible.  She had remarried and then man adopted me, however old, as his child and I didn't seem to mind much.  Even though I loved my father dearly I was happy my mother could continue on with her life.

Inuyasha and I continued as friends as well.  We kept in close contact with Sango, Miroku and Kouga and when Sango and Kouga finally married we were all there.  I was her bridesmaid and Inu and Miroku were groomsmen.  It continued on for three years like this, developing a kind of pattern.  Inu would call every day and try to force me to wear something provocative.  Tuesday dinners were still with Sesshomaru and Sundays were with my mother and Martin (her husband).  And finally, Friday brunches were with the whole gang, Miroku, Kouga, Sango, Inu and I.  Periodically we would go out to dinner but we always kept our Fridays.  Miroku worked at some hospital doing god knows what but I fancied he hung out at the morgue and didn't want to tell us all.  He rarely talked about it.  Kouga had his own restaurant that was terribly successful so Sango just worked at some local boutique she started with her mother but now owned since her mother passed on.  She just managed the place and did nothing of consequence for she was pregnant and had one at home already.  

Inuyasha worked for his father in the family business, a family owned apartment franchise that Mr. Kingston started from scratch and was now a multi-million dollar business.  They kept the family ethics and benefited from the individual attention and care to each piece of property they owned.

I was twenty-four, soon to be twenty-five when everything started to change.  When my happy life took another giant leap in the direction it was supposed to be headed and left my old life behind in the dust.


	3. I Want To Be With You

Hey there.  Sorry it has been so long.  I have been busy.  But I am updating this first and then getting to CMAR…which will be finished soon, don't worry!  I might continue it though if I get enough of a demand.  It might be in the form of another story with the married couple (opps, did I give THAT away?) of Sess/Kag and their interesting relationship.  I quite enjoy their chemistry in that story, its funny.  

As for this…people have been asking about the dates.  DON'T BE CONFUSED!  There is nothing to be confused about.  Honestly.  The dates don't mean anything except to serve as reference to when she wrote those little "interludes."  The dates don't pertain to the story at all.  Think of it this way.  Kagome is writing about her life and she is adding in things she has written for her whole life.  So…don't worry about the dates!  

Review and enjoy.

Ja,

-MC

Trying to reformat this…hope it works!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_8/16/01_

_11:23 p.m._

_I almost never thought about it.  Honestly.  I didn't think about it consciously.  You know, "the ONE."  Soulmate, dream man/woman, mate, husband/wife—whatever you want to call it.  I just didn't think about it.  But then I realized that I didn't need to think about it.  It was there, surrounding me, completing me (until they inevitably came, I hoped) and it became so common it assimilated into my daily life.  Half-formed thoughts and random-nonsense comments forgotten and never given a second reckoning.  Little habit actions and reactions that would eventually drive my "the one" to me—hopefully.  Little idiosyncrasies and mishaps of my character, little whimsical daily normalities that would repel the unwanted and pernicious into the background and bring forward the man, the man that would complete me better than these little character studies of the brain and heart—poor replacements that yearned for their proper owner to come and take their place in the manor of my life.  I didn't think about it.  Honestly.  I didn't think about it.  But I didn't need to.  Even if I did think about it, it was already though subconsciously so many times before that my brain recognizes it as dejavu—a needless repition of though that is again discarded into the "unconscious reaction" pile and again forgotten.  Only to be remembered and the merry-go round would start again in my brain.  All a simple reaction that I never thought about but yearned for the outcome of my subconscious's hard labor.  I wanted the fruit of a labor I never knew I participated in.  And true fulfillment came I my better half, my missing piece of the puzzle, my "the one."  Mate.  Love.  The words were interchangeable because we could not properly express in these futile attempts at communication to even begin to understand this need, this want, this love.  Can't you tell?  I honestly never think about it.  Consciously.  _

_The mind is a funny thing, isn't it?_

_-----------------------------------------------------_

Inuyasha was going on a three-month stay to France.  He wanted to experience life the Parisian way and no one could stop him, even me.  Me, the girl who had seen him through the Jaime's and the Johnny's and comforted him through the Paul's and Peter's. I saw him falling in love in the first five minutes and I saw him be completely indifferent until the third date.  But through all this he always came back to me.  He always cried on my shoulder and ate my phish food ice cream out of the freezer.  

He wasn't there for me in this manner.  He didn't really have to.  He was all the man I needed and if I wanted a sexual escapade I had one.  I was still a size fourteen, but my most seriously relationship had been Miroku all those years ago in college.  (More like, what…three? already?)  I didn't really date and once the sex was over I only yearned to be in Inuyasha's arms instead of the unfortunate man I had impressed myself upon.  I wanted to comfort, really, that Inuyasha provided.  And now he was going away for three months without me.  With him gone taking it one day at a time was going to get increasingly harder.  Unwantedly harder.

"Kagome, darling, why do you insist upon wearing men's clothing?  I mean, please, tell me they are some sexy man's shorts that you spent an amazing night with last night…Kag?"

I was at Inu's house wearing an old college t-shirt and some men's clothing.  Well, shorts.  Okay, who is with me when I say that men got the most comfortable clothing to wear?  Seriously, I hadn't discovered this until Miroku, of course, when back in those crazy days of college when I actually had a semi-sexy man in my bed, well, err, janitor closet, I stole one of his shorts.  Which, when we became friends I was slightly embarrassed so I kind of gave them away.  To Sango.  Which, I seriously didn't know she was going to be friends with Miroku too.  I wonder if she still has them…Anyways, I gave them to her.  But not before I wore them!  Well, tried them.  And I fell in love.  I didn't wear them all the time, I wore them to bed usually and I reminded Inu of this immediately.  He had called me to come and help him with last minute packing for his trip to Paris, for goodness sake!  And shoot, if I just wore the ones Miroku bought me (he noticed I had a penchant for buying them, I guess) then I could kind of lie and say they were a man's…

"Inu, how can you even know about men's clothing such as this.  I didn't know you shopped at Target."

"Kagome, I date men.  I am a man.  Just because I'm gay doesn't mean I'm not acquainted with the cheap men's clothing.  And anyways, Sesshomaru is my brother.  He used to live in those things whole he fucked everything that breathed and had a vaginal hole."

"Inuyasha!"

"You heard the stories!  And I fear they aren't even the tip of the iceberg."

_Continually throughout the three years at the office…_

_"Eiffel Tower." The same man asks while the other men wait around for Sesshomaru to answer._

_"Yes," he always answers.  _

_Sometimes it varies.  With other little weird places and events.  What are they talking about?_

_"Toys R' Us!"_

_"Yes."_

_"Damn it."_

_--_

_"Coffee shop."_

_"Yes."_

_"Fuck."_

_--_

_"A bar."_

_"Yes."_

_--_

_"Donut shop."_

_"Yes."_

_--_

_"The office!"_

_Sigh "Yes."_

_--_

_"Harvard, Princeton, Northwestern, Georgetown, NYU, Yale."_

_"Yes."_

_"To which one?"_

_"All of them."_

_--_

_"When Jaws pops out of the water at Universal Studios!"_

_"Yes."_

_--_

_"Disneyland?"_

_"Do you have to ask?"_

_"Which ride?"_

_"What do you think?"_

_"Really? All of them?"_

_Sigh "Yes."_

_--_

_"The Taj Mahal."_

_"Yes."_

_"Isn't that a sin?"_

_--_

_"Pearl Harbor."_

_"Yes."_

_--_

_"Venice."_

_"Yes."_

_"On a boat?"_

_"Come on guys."_

_"Definitely on a boat."_

_--_

_"A pyramid!"_

_"Yes…wait…twice."_

_--_

_"I know one!  My backyard!"_

_"Darren, you know that isn't fair.  It has to be a public place."_

_"Fine…"_

_"By the way, you have a lovely sister."_

_--_

_After one of these interesting meetings I saw Sesshomaru take out an interesting piece of literature and leaf through it unemotionally.  Wondering what book it was, I asked,_

_"Are you reading a novel?"  He immediately got extremely red and closed the book automatically.  Touchy subject.  _

_"Uh, no.  It's my black book."_

_Shit.  That thing is fuckin huge!  _

Would this be a bad time to mention that I haven't told Inu about my little Tuesday dinners with Sesshomaru?  I felt like I was betraying him with Sess.  For Sess offered me something I could never receive with Inu.  Which was comfort.  Comfort for our mutual sorry state and perhaps comfort in a strange sort of friendship.  And maybe I didn't tell him because the time we had, Sess and I, it was precious.  Sacred, almost to a point.  He listened to me vent about my feelings.  I would gladly listen to his but he rarely shared much.  But I didn't mind.  I had my confidant.  It was just terribly ironic that he was my love's brother.  Just a tad…incestual, for lack of a better term.  Anyway, Inu would blow it out of proportion and think Sesshomaru was trying to take advantage of me.  Which he wasn't.  I mean, for heaven's sake, the man is a sex god.  And I…was an out of shape twenty-four year old in love with a gay man.  How much more pathetic can you get?  Anyways, the most contact we eve had was holding hands and it felt good to have my tiny hand engulfed in his large, manly ones once in a while.  Yeah…

"Kag?  Are you listening to me?"

Heh.  No.

"What is wrong with you?  You used to love to take a stab at the ever horrendous Sesshomaru."  He adopted a strangely omnipotent tone when he said the title. " It's almost like you've grown a conscience and we just can't have that…"

"Yes, we all know I can't be allowed to have a conscience."

"The last time that happened California was introduced to my wardrobe, your wardrobe and coincidentally Sesshomaru's wardrobe.  Did you know he didn't even complain?  I do hope you didn't go through his closet alone."

Danger, danger Kagome!

"His, ah, secretary took me there.  I know her, since I…know him, I mean since I work there.  He said I would be alright."  Nice one.  

"She knows his apartment very well, I imagine."

I giggled a little hurriedly but inside I was taking a deep sigh of relief.  Usually he knows when I am lying immediately because I completely suck at it but he was a little too involved in dissing his brother and picking out more clothes.  Too close for comfort.  I mean, Sesshomaru hadn't told…why should I?  Inu continued to go through his closet for other outfits to bring—like he didn't have enough already and like he _didn't_ plan to shop his ass off anyway when he got there.  His passion for designer suits would be quenched.  For now.  Finally at about 2:30 a.m. he was finished and decided to shower for his flight at four.  I rested on his bed while he changed in the walk in closet.

"Why do you have to leave so early?"

"I told you, flights are cheaper earlier."

"So…why do you care?"

"I don't, Sesshomaru choose it.  Who knows?  Now walk me out to the limo so we can have a quick goodbye."  I pouted, he saw it. "Now, don't make that face, Kag.  You know I'll call you enough.  And anyway, we've said goodbye about ten times already."  It was a short goodbye, as he wanted it to be.  But I didn't shed any tears.  It was three months!  In the grand scheme of things, what was three months?  But as I went back upstairs to envelope myself in Inu's bed which still smelled of him I couldn't help but wonder what three months would do to us.  But I didn't really care about that, did I?  What id he met someone?  And with that thought I fell into a restless sleep in the bed of my love.  Unrequited love.

_6/3/91_

_4:36 p.m._

_I was there.  I wasn't looking from afar while my mother sped past in the car.  I was in the moment.  I was the one that was zipping up their wetsuit instead of some unknown woman like a thousand times before.  I was brushing my hair out of my eyes and glancing at my partner and climbing into the waves.  I was taking off my scuba gear and fins like I did a thousand times before.  A thousand times before.  So many things had happened to lead me to this moment.  Thousands of people loved, died, cried and lived.  People fought wars.  People painted portraits.  People make computers, talked on telephones, went to the dentist all for me to be at this moment in my life.  For me to be where I am right now at this exact moment people fought, bled and died for it.  And in turn I shall continue this tradition a thousand more times for someone thousands of years in the future.  For the thousandth time.  _

It was about two o'clock when I woke up again.  Groaning I realized that I was not at home and therefore had no clothes whatsoever.  Eh.  No one is home at this hour anyway.  Mr. Kingston is off somewhere; Sesshomaru is at his apartment and…blah.  I can't think about it.  Grumbling about whatever pissed me off (currently it was my toothbrush that was permanently housed at Inu's house just in case I stayed and how it now looked used.  Stupid Inu!) But I finished my shower and covered in a towel I went to peek out the door.

"Jaken?  Jaaaaaaaaaaken?"  God, finally.  And I saw Jaken round the corner.  But he wasn't alone.  Nooooooooooo, of course he wasn't.  I started at the feet and slowly traveled up.  He was tall and clad in beige dress pants (Armani, I would guess) and a white shirt (Ralph Lauren) that was unbuttoned slightly with the sleeved rolled up.  His hands were in his pockets and he gently tossed his long hair out of his face that somehow was the picture of masculinity.  Of course in this god forsaken house fuckin Sesshomaru would be here.  Fuckity fuck fuck.  I tried to smile and of course I would wave and of course of bloody course the towel would slip giving Jaken AND Sesshomaru a lovely free show.  Quickly grabbing my towel from the floor I slam the door and fall down against it.  I didn't even want to look at their sickened expressions that were most likely there.  An immediate knock came with a dignified cough.  I didn't want to talk to him now!

"Kagome, Kagome…come on.  Talk to me…" there was laughter in his voice.  The bastard.  "Come on.  Let me in.  Don't be embarrassed."

"No."

"Come on.  Jaken is gone, probably off to cherish that image…"

"Don't say that!"

"Come on, get off the floor and put Inu's robe on."  How did he…?  Whaaaaaaaaat? "Kagome," there was warning in his voice, "I have a key, you know."

"Fine!  Let me get the damn robe."

"That's my girl."  Hardly.  God, he made me sound like a dog or something.  I got the robe and threw it on, securing the tie with a death knot.  They would have to cut this thing off me.  I opened the door and he was leaning against the frame with a, surprise surbloodyprise, smirk on his blasted face.  

"Oh, I like your other outfit better."  I wanted to punch him.  Seriously, I did.

"Stop saying things you don't mean.  Lying doesn't become you.  Although you're used to it, since you're a lawyer and all."  His eyes flashed and darkened for a moment before he—somehow—picked me up and threw me on the bed.  Hovering over me, he said, 

"I never say things I don't mean," and then he tickled me mercilessly.  The bastard.

"Sesshomaru, what—haa hahaha—did you want…to talk to me about?"  He collapsed next to me on the bed and turned on one elbow to look at me.

"Eh, nothing in particular," he smiled sweetly.

"That's it, you pompous, arrogant assh--" someone coughed.  I looked down.  I was straddling him and that bathrobe; you know the one that someone was going to have to cut off me?  Yeah, who guessed it?  It was open—while I was on top of him.  The only thing that would complete this picture would be—someone coughed again, yes, of course—Jaken.  

"Its not what it looks like!"  Good one Kagome, I silently yelled while I closed the stupid robe and cursed my fate as I rolled over.  But not before I felt Sesshomaru's hands move from their place around my waist.  When did that—scratch that.  It's not important right now.

"I assure you, I do not require an explanation.  Sir, you told me to bring some…_female_ clothing and I have done so."

"Leave Jaken."

I did not like how he said "female."  It was as if I was some loose woman throwing herself on Sesshomaru.  Which admittedly, it looked like, but it's Sesshomaru!  He's like my…I glanced over at him smirking uncontrollably at me…He's like my…one more glance, his smirk widening into a full smile, relaxing his whole face and reminding me remarkably of a picture I'd seen of him with his mother.  He was about ten and he was laughing on the beach.  Yeah, I know.  I thought they had forgotten to replace the fake; cheesy picture the company puts in there to seal the frame.  For years I thought this.  Until I really looked closer.  It had to be a Kingston.  The boy had long silver-white hair blowing in the breeze (admittedly I thought it was a girl first—don't tell Sess!) and he was there with a woman who could only be his mother.  She was smiling at him as well, but her eyes shone with an inner battle.  I wonder what she died from.  He was laughing harder now and I had to punch him again.  He's like my…

"Come to dinner with me tonight."

"But it isn't Tuesday.  In fact, its umm…Saturday."

"Ah!  She has mastered the art of deciphering the days of the week.  I've been teaching her for years, you know."

"Sess…"

"Honestly, I never thought she would pull through, you know, after the "incident" and all."

"Sess…"

"It was a hard time for all of us, since, well, she wasn't all there.  There was this one time she—"

"You are the only one that should be worrying about his mental health.  God, who do you think you are talking to anyway?"

"To father, of course.  Hello father…"

"Your father is not…" I hit my head repeatedly on the headboard.  OF course.

"Hello Mr. Kingston," I smiled sheepishly and waved my hand in an embarrassed gesture.  Sesshomaru only laughed even more.  I suddenly had a flashback and I felt like I was sixteen again and was caught doing something dirty on my boyfriend's bed.  Too bad it couldn't be farther from the truth.  Sesshomaru was thirty or something and he was giddy on the bed like we were up to something before his father came in.  When did his father come in anyway?  Did he hear Sess ask me to dinner?  

"Don't call me father, you know I hate that."

"Yes, that's exactly why I do it."  Mr. Kingston expertly ignored Sesshomaru's comment.

"Kagome, I'm glad you're here.  Inuyasha hasn't brought you round for dinner lately."

"I could bring her "round for dinner," father."

Okay, what was this suddenly joyful and playful Sesshomaru?  Where did he come from?  And where is my stoic and pensive Sesshomaru?  Where?  Where?  God, Inu is gone five hours and Sesshomaru is happier than I have ever seen him.  All Inu and no sex made Sess a dull boy.  He he he.  THAT sounds naughty.  Well, who knows about the no sex part, but what girlfriend would allow a guy to win and dine another girl every Tuesday night?

"Kagome, I fear you have converted my son. And to be honest, it wasn't the one I thought it would be."  I laughed but was thoroughly confused.  

"Converted?"  Converted?  Sesshomaru?  To what?  

"Father, you speak too much.  Perhaps Kagome should get some clothes on before you speak of anything that resembles the church."

"I resent that comment," I huffed.

"So do I."

"Father, leave."

"Fine, but come and see me soon, Kagome.  Goodbye…son."  And with that he left the room.  I got up to get some clothes on.

"What are you staying now?  This isn't a free showing?"

"Most unfortunate.  But I'm staying.  Change in the closet.  Or the bathroom.  And you never answered me about tonight."  I huffed again and walked into the bathroom with the clothes.  I almost forgot them.  But I'm not that unlucky, I see.  

"Yeah, whatever."

"Good, so what do you want to do beforehand…?"  I was thinking…hmm…

"What time is it?"  

"Three-thirty."

"Shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I have to meet Sango at three forty-five at Costello's.  And I took a cab last night because I didn't think I was going to be awake enough to drive home.  Shit!"

"I could drive you."  He said through the door, his voice seemed closer now.  "Can I come in now?"  God, why did this man want to see me in this getup?  I mean, it was a gorgeous dress, but it was a little tight across my breasts.  Grrrrrrrrr…damn them.

"Sure, but I look hideous, I assure you.  But this dress is amazing.  Where did you get it?"  It was Asian cut, with the whole neckline and fake buttons down my chest.  But it flowed out in a flowery print that made it an altogether comfortable summer dress.  

"It was my mother's."  He was in the bathroom now, staring at me as if was some anomaly or something.  He silently straightened about the collar and with a look of deep concentration turned me around and buttoned up the back.  His long fingers grazed my back and I had to remind myself to breath.  Goodness, Kagome.  It's Sesshomaru.  

"I like it on you."  I smiled and blushed slightly.  He took another step towards me.  Was it just me or was he a little too close for comfort?  I put my hand on his forehead and looked at him quizzically.

"What's up?"

"I…I just…I want you to keep that dress."  Was it just me or was he a little flustered?

"God, Sesshomaru, she must be an amazing woman."  

"What?"  He said, still slightly dazed.

"The woman you are so obviously enamored with.  Goodness, if a man thought that way about me…well, no man would think that way about me, but if he did…" he brought a finger up to my lips.

"You're going to be late."  Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!  Of course I was!  I rushed out of the bathroom with Sesshomaru hot on my heels and once we were outside he lead me to his BMW.  Ouch.   Nice car.  The ride was silent until I put on the radio station.  Well, since I then discovered that he didn't have any stations programmed I reprogrammed the thing to stations I liked.  He didn't listen to them anyway.  And when he drove me he usually drove the Jaguar.  I already programmed my stations in there.  We waved goodbye and I told him Sango would drop me back off at the house for he insisted that I wouldn't change and just wear the dress for tonight.  Sango was waiting in the usual spot on the terrace.

"God, Kag, you look great.  Have you lost weight?"  

"Who knows?  How are you?"

"Good, sweetie.  But that dress.  Its gorgeous, where did you get it?"  Well, I had to tell her about Sesshomaru eventually, right?  I mean, I usually just explained away the Tuesdays with a work meeting or something and it never bothered anyone.  I mean, who wanted to go out on a Tuesday anyway?  

"Sango, this is going to sound unusual, but well, I got it from Sesshomaru."  Nothing could have prepared me for her reaction.

"Oh, right.  Of course." 

"What?  You're not…you're not…freaked out or something?"

"Oh no.  Honey, I've known about him for ages?  When are you going to tell Inu about the relationship, eh?"  

"Well, I wasn't going to say anything…"

"Kagome, you're sleeping with the guy, he is going to find out eventually!"  Whaaaaaaaaat?

"Whaaaaaaaaaaat? ME, sleeping with Sesshomaru?  No frickin way.  We're just friends!"

"Yeah, right, then why is he buying you clothes?"

"He isn't…this is his mothers, and if you must know I was at Inu's last night saying goodbye and I just didn't want to go back home.  And Sesshomaru was there and he got me some clothes…"

"Kagome!  Don't tell me you still love Inu!  You don't, right?"  God, was this another time to mention that Sango HATED that I ever loved Inu because he was gay.  Well, she didn't mind that I started to love him because I never knew…but she thought I was a masochist for continuing to love him.  He was just so perfect, what could I do?

_9/7/03_

_2:15 p.m._

I Want To Be With You 

_I miss you like it was Tuesday_

_I love you like a river, so wide_

_I want to go home like its Friday_

_I need to be by your side_

_Last time I saw you, you were graying_

_And I always remember you saying_

_I miss you like it was Tuesday_

_I love you like a river, so wide_

_I want to go home like its Friday_

_I need to be by your side_

_I remember your heartbeat a' bumping_

_Yours and mine a' thumping_

_And now my ears are ringing_

_And I know that you're still singing_

_I miss you like it was Tuesday_

_I love you like a river, so wide_

_I want to go home like its Friday_

_I need to be by your side_

"Sango, you know the answer to that question."

"Ugh!  You are completely hopeless.  But tell me about something WITH hope.  I was praying that you were moving on with Sesshomaru."

"How did you know, anyway?"

"Oh, well, I mean, I go to that restaurant too.  Just one time Kouga wanted to take me out on Tuesday because the babysitter was there anyway.  And he chose to go to Weston's.  Come on, dear, I was shocked but happy."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Well, I thought you would tell me in your good time.  So you aren't sleeping with him?  Are you at least seeing each other?"

"No!  We're just friends."  

"I see…" We ordered some coffee and I sat back and enjoyed the view of the garden.  I was about to tuck in to some delicious scones when Sango cut in again.

"By the way, does he make you pay?"

"What?"

"Does Sesshomaru make you pay for your own food when you guys go out?"

"No…"

"It is so a date!  How long have you been doing this?"

"Three years and its not a date!"

"You mean you have been dating Sesshomaru Kingston, notorious sex fiend for three years and never given him any?  You must be good, girl.  Veeeeeery good."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You cannot keep a man like that interested for three years without being something extraordinary.  Damn, I heard rumors that he stopped his sexual escapades but that was a couple years ago.  I didn't know I knew the woman who changed him."

"God, it wasn't me.  It was some other woman.  He loves her desperately but he said he doesn't deserve her or something.  He doesn't talk about her much, but he sure as hell listens to me and understands my dilemma with Inuyasha."  Sango gave me a knowing smile that I didn't understand and luckily the conversation turned to other comments that I could speak of freely and without restraint.  Sango has always been like this.  She is a woman who life just steps out of the way for.  She gets what she wants.  I mean, she works for it, surely, but she doesn't miss a beat, that woman.  Things come to her like a sailor is drawn to the sea.  And I could understand the magnetism.  Who couldn't love Sango?  She is fabulous and I love her confidence and fiery spirit.  I guess I had it too, but it was different.  I was always the "friend" with her.  She dated and I was the friend that came on some dates to check out the guy.  He was usually gorgeous but an ass.  What else do you expect from men who can get practically any woman they want?  Of course it goes to their head.  But anyway, Sango is just this woman who knows what she wants and I guess it kind of makes me jealous.  Because she goes about it this entirely nice and friendly way that I could never pull off.  I am entirely too brash for her.  Which fueled more than one of our fights.

_4/12/00_

_4:54 a.m._

_Okay.  So...as for yesterday. Yeah I did feel blown off.  Still do.  I really needed someone to talk to yesterday and you just kinda went off to see a movie.  I didn't care about petroglyph.  I waited for you and told my parents to go do stuff without me because I was going to go out with you later that night.  And then you call and go to a movie.  And as for Kouga, I don't like him, plain and simple.  I don't HAVE to __like him.  God, Sango, I TRY to like him...something about him just rubs me the wrong way, okay?  I already told you that I didn't want to be around him.  __But the truth probably is...is that I feel like I'm loosing you.  I feel like you are letting me go for bigger and better things.  Your friends, your boyfriend, your life without me.  Truth be told, I've always felt that I needed you more than you needed me.  I know you look up to me and respect me but I've always seen you as the stronger person.  You have confidence to do and get the things you want...in such a nice and caring way.  I could never do that.  I'm bitter and mean and cynical and people think I'm too brash and blunt.  Well, that's me.  I don't know when to shut up and sometimes I don't even realize I say the wrong thing.  __And I am so happy that you found someone who makes you feel that way.  I am really, really happy for you.  But another truth is that I've always been jealous too.  You have had so many boyfriends and now you have Kouga...this guy who you love and loves you back.  I guess deep down the cynic in me realizes that I might never find that and you have already found it...at barely 21.__So when I shoot down your friends or when I diss Kouga (well sometimes) I am really trying to get you to turn back to me.  I mean, when we were first in college you didn't have all these great friends to go out and do stuff with.  You just had me.  And now when you have these people who can be you with...it kind of makes me sad.  Because I can't really make friends like you.  I mean, yes...I have a lot of friends.  But I don't really have any close ones like you.  You, I can do anything with, talk about anything with and go anywhere with.  I feel comfortable talking about sex and guys with you...all the way to our fetish with Victorian romance comedies.  I can tell you and talk to you about things I have never told anyone else before...or if I have they just look at me weird.__And you don't look at me weird.  (Well, unless it's a joke)  I mean, I have Inuyasha...but I can't talk to him about everything.  And Miroku...but I never see him because he is busy.  And Kim but we always end up talking about movies or something.  You really are the best friend from heaven.  I mean, we've never had a fight, right?  And you don't get mad at me when I steal your stuff.  (That's a bonus).  But most of all I love you so much.  You are like a little sister to me.  Someone who I love so much it hurts sometimes.  And when you go away I have to let you go...but it still hurts more.  __I'm glad you told me how you felt.  I will try to tone down myself a bit...but it is really in my nature to just be totally truthful.  Ya know...I call'em like I see'em.  And I'm not angry.  In fact I'm bawling over here.  __I love you.  I hope you don't hate me too much.__Love always,_

_Kagome_

Needless to say, I was just jealous of her and Kouga's relationship.  He wasn't really the problem.  I just didn't want to loose her.  We talked for a little while longer but then I told her I had to go because Sesshomaru wanted to go to dinner.  Which only got her started about how we should be dating and how we almost already are and blah blah blah.  She sometimes needs to meddle in someone else's life.  Too bad deep down I love it.  

We kiss goodbye and I walk up to the door.  But before I even knock Sesshomaru is there ushering me out to his car again.  I sigh.  God, here we go.  


	4. Past Lives and Dreams: Recipe for Romanc...

Well, hello, hello. I am back and quicker now.  But I think that this format is going to work.  The last time I had all these problems and I could barely do anything to get it to go on as well as it did.  I even had to have Suppis Tenshi post it for me because I couldn't!  Thank you Suppis Tenshi!  But other than that it has been fun and I hope you enjoy this next chapter.  I am trying harder to work some more romance in, but I am planning to take it slow but other than some major events I don't really have anything else planned and I am just writing this as it comes along.  So I hope you enjoy it!

Read and enjoy!

-MC

_---------------------------------------------_

_9/20/99_

_2:04 a.m.___

_I sigh.  I take a deep breath and contemplate.  I think and I think and I think.  In fact I think so much that my head begins to hurt.  But it isn't painful.  It is…interesting.  It is that feeling when you have all these emotions swimming through your mind—confusion, heartache, longing, pride, independence, love, anything that has enough guts to make itself known to you in your conscious.  Your subconscious, on the other hand, is working furiously with the feelings, emotions and desires that you aren't physically aware of.  I am concentrating so hard that I can feel the prickling of tears behind my eyes and I take another deep breath.  What am I truly feeling at the moment?  Totally lost, for starters.  Totally and utterly lost.  I'm here, waving my map of life around and yelling at anyone who dares to pass by "where they hell am I?  Can you please help me?"  Slap me with the stick of utter confusion because I don't recognize a single landmark, event or anything whatsoever.  In my minds eye I can see myself look at my life map again, scratching my head.  I had it all drawn out, my life.  It is here on the map, I see it now.  I see where I want to go, where I want to be.  But the problem is, where the hell am I now?  If I don't know where I am, then how can I get to where I want to be?  I got lost from my transition from high school to college, I can tell you that much.  But even though I am now physically in college, it feels like I haven't gotten there mentally.  Bloody hell.  How can one get lost on a nonexistent map?  How can one be there for one second, pulling a Marauder's map from Harry Bloody Potter which myself physically manifesting itself as a dot on my map and then how can I vanish?  I don't have an invisibility cloak, although that would be handy when sneaking around the co-ed bathrooms but seriously, where did I go?  _

_--------------------------------------------_

We are in the car.  Well, I am physically in the car, but emotionally I am a million miles away.  I don't mean to be rude, but Sesshomaru and our whole little outing is the farthest thing from my mind.  I was contemplating this feeling that I have started to feel more and more, in the short time that I knew Inu was leaving and now that he is actually gone.  It is confusion.  What am I going to do for three months, honestly?  I mean, we did everything together.  We laughed at the same things and joked and just all around acted like the best friends we were.  And it helped that we saw each other often enough.  And Inu was a kick in the pants.  He was my "take anywhere" friend.  If I needed a date from some work function, I wanted to go out on a Saturday night or if I just wanted to be in watching movies, he was there for me at all times.  And we could just do anything.  Not that I couldn't do these things with Sango, but I had been doing them longer with Inu and once you have a pattern why should you do something new?  

But now the pattern was broken.  Inu was gone.  Who would take his place when I needed someone to gossip to about something totally stupid?  Who could I just take anywhere and make me feel like I actually had a man that was good enough to take me out on a Saturday night?  A hand on my thigh took me out of my ponderings.

"What is wrong?  You are being in Kagome recluse mode and you have this hilarious but pensive look on your face."  Ha bloody ha.  Like him adding the "pensive" part will make me forgive him for the "hilarious" comment.  I don't look funny when I'm thinking!

"Goodness gracious Sess, I am just being serious for a moment.  I have a lot on my mind, okay?"  He visibly wilted next to me in the driver's seat.  Shit Kagome.  Nice one, stupid ass.  He was just trying to distract you.  And he is taking you out to dinner.  Don't be a bitch.  "I'm sorry; it was just something that Sango said got me thinking."

"No problem.  I understand.  Want to talk about it?"  I actually didn't.  But it was nice that he offered and all.  Well, duh, he is my friend and all.

"No, that's alright.  I wouldn't want to bore you.  And anyways, we can talk about something else.  What did you do after I left?"

"Think of you."

"Hardy har har, Sess.  You are such a good liar that I am seriously thinking of hiring you as my personal lawyer just in case I decide to kill someone during my holiday."  Oh, I didn't tell you that either?  Yeah, well, Inu isn't the only one that deserves a holiday and although I can't afford any foreign countries I decided to take some paid time off and just be around the house and perhaps take a few tiny trips around the state.  Which I think was going to be fun, but I just needed to find someone to accompany on these little outings once in a while so, like Sess said, I don't go into recluse mode extreme.

"Yes, I don't even think that my excellent skills can help you if you decide to kill Miroku in his sleep."  Even though Sess had never officially hung out with my friends during functions, he had heard enough from me about Miroku and his groping tendencies.  I wonder what he would do if he found out that he was who I lost my virginity to…

"Oh really?  Have to keep that in mind for the next time spontaneous murder happens upon my mind," I drawl out, imitating his usual bored tone a little too well.  

"Oh but darling, that would be completely horrid if you got blood all over your clothes," he says in a perfect imitation of Inuyasha and I can't help it, I laugh hysterically.

"Sess, are you sure you haven't missed your calling?"

"How so?"

"Perhaps you get yourself into acting.  I'm sure you could sleep your way through."  And then I stop—completely horrified I just let that comment slip out.  Shit.  Nice one, again.  He is being perfectly nice with you and you go ahead and fucking insult him.  What a bitch. " Sess, I didn't mean that, honestly, I didn't—"

" No, its fine.  I'm sure you've heard enough stories from Inuyasha."  He looks a little crestfallen and I don't push the matter any further.  And luckily we pull into a parking lot pretty quick so I can save the embarrassing silence and the now almost visible rift between us and our good moods.  I felt like sinking back into bed and just slipping into my bed and reading a good book.

_4/7/95___

_8:33 p.m.___

_"Ender's Game" is by far one of the best books ever written.  I finished it in two days.  I actually read it in between classes.  I felt like such a nerd but I had to know what was going to happen.  I can't recommend it for everybody because I am not everybody but for somebody, "Ender's Game" is for you._

_I have always been interested in everything that has ever been written but there are a few of the authors that I simply adore.  Orson Scott Card is obviously one of the best authors that could ever have been alive to this day.  I mean, honestly, Ender is such a cool, cool kid.  It is almost like Holden from "Catcher in the __Rye_."  He is a guy that you want to be your friend but he can only be your friend if you actually deserve it.  And it also helps that he is just so smart.  You would feel privileged if he would respect you and be your friend.  But that isn't the only reason as to why you want to be friends with them.  It is of course their integrity and their charm and their absolute dedication to what they believe is real and right.  Sometimes I wish that I could be like those heroes in those wonderful novels of suspense or science fiction or whatnot.  I want to have that absolute knowledge of what is right and what is true and what is noble.  I want to be someone who just seems to have all the answers and they don't have to be necessarily right, but they are right in their life and that is what I want.  I want to be absolutely certain with something for once.  Just for once I want to know something for certain!  Like some hero or protagonists of a novel. Does anyone ever think that it would be the best thing in the world to be the hero or protagonist of a novel?  You get the girl or guy, you solve the mystery or whatnot and you get a happy ending.  Who doesn't want this in life?  I want my happy ending.  And perhaps knowing about something certain in my life then I could finally have this happy ending that I not only need and deserve.  __

We silently went into the restaurant which I noted was not the usual one that we went to on our Tuesday nights.  It was some swanky upper class restaurant and when the maitre d came in she seemed to know him really well.  I immediately knew that Sesshomaru came there often.  And he fit in there.  With all those gorgeous ladies and those hunky men who just knew what to say and just knew what to do.  And I admit, I admit that it made me a little jealous.  Not of the woman who were staring openly at Sesshomaru (and I swear they were salivating) but of the fact that they belonged somewhere.  When I thought about a place where I belonged the only place that I could come up with was when I was with Inuyasha.  At that made me a little disgusted, you know, that the only place you felt comfortable with was not a place but a person.  A person for goodness sake.  And perhaps I am being a little rash, I mean he is my friend and all but still, is he truly what I can call home?  Or is it something that I just think I can call home because I haven't found the real home that I am yearning for?  God damn Sango!  Why did she have to get me all thinking about things and all pensive and just being totally stupid.  I'm with Sesshomaru right now.  I am being treated nicely and I am acting totally bitchy back to him.  Goodness and he has just ordered for me.  Was I really thinking that long?

"Sess, I really am sorry.  I mean, I didn't mean it, but it is true, I have heard about your past and everything.  I mean, how can I not miss it when you have those guys in the office asking you random places every day and then your huge black book.  It is almost like you want it known or something…"  I looked at him again and mentally slapped myself.  I just couldn't say anything right to him.  

"No, I don't want it known.  It was a long time ago, Kagome.  It was a person that I don't really know anymore." I took his hand under the table that was resting on his knee.  I looked into his golden eyes and he sighed, squeezing my hand back and placing his other hand on top of mine.  "Have you ever wanted to be someone else?  Have you ever wanted to just leave your life behind and forget about everything?"  I nodded my head slowly.  "Well, imagine feeling that every bloody day of your life.  My father is a kind man, he always has been.  But he expects so much and he wants so much from me.  At first I tried to be that man, I tried to be that man that he wanted me to be.  But I couldn't do it.  I couldn't be this son that he wanted me to be.  But Inuyasha could do it.  And so I left.  

I wanted to dominate and show that I had power over something that my father did not.  I wanted to take my life into my own hands, and well, a sexual revolution, for lack of a better term was the thing that struck me as the most plausible.  I was young, still in college, taking a year off for traveling and just doing whatever.  Since I worked as a journalist from connections my…_father…had unwittingly gotten me at the time, I received a job that allowed me to travel extensively.  And on the plane there was this woman who just gave me the eyes.  You know, those eyes that said you could do anything you wanted anytime you wanted.  And so I guess that I just did.  I just took her into the bathroom and we just had sex right then and there.  And doing something illegal, being with someone who I had never met before in the span of five minutes, not planning to get to know them after the deed was done, was, well, freeing.  It made me free, just for the small amount of time, it made me completely and impossibly free.  Something I had never felt before stuck under my father's image."  _

I knew exactly how he felt.  I knew what he was speaking of.  My revolution was loving Inuyasha.  But unlike his revolution, mine had never stopped.  Mine was still stuck on this carousel and I didn't want to get off anytime soon.  I was prepared to stay on for life.

"But I couldn't do it forever.  I continued like this for about two years, fucking anything that wanted me and then writing the location down in my book.  It wasn't to brag, honestly, it was to prove that I had actually been in these places and that for one moment, I had been totally out of my father's image.  These women had no idea whom I was, what I was and what I was feeling.  It was a release, something that we both craved and something that when finished was over.  It wasn't anything that was for life.  But I am a man of my word.  I didn't want to leave forever.  And so with very little or no notice I left the paper and I went back to my father.  No words were spoken.  Just one day I showed up and the next morning I was going off to work with my father as a lawyer for his business.  And then I moved to Charmander even though I still take some of my father's accounts.  All my life I have never chose a path I took except for those two years.  I never allowed myself to go out on my own path and be the man that I want to be.  I just became my father's shadow.  And now that is all I have to hold onto."

What can you say to that?  Obviously this realization has been brewing inside him and bursting to come out.  Or else he wouldn't have told me, right?  Obviously it is because he has been silent for so many years that he finally had to tell someone and it just happened to be me.  

"What would you do then, Sess, if you could choose your own destiny?"  The hands that clutched my own under the table stiffened a little and then gripped my own tightly.  The other hand of mine sat idly by my thigh, hovering in action, wondering what to do with such an intense look in his golden orbs and his almost desperate clutching of a hand that was beginning to loose color and feeling.  

"I would start a family.  And I would have a wife who loved me for who I am and not because of my face or my money.  We would buy some cottage by the sea and we would work together doing whatever suited us."  He looked amazingly wistful for a moment and then he cleared his throat and the desperate clutching ceased and he withdrew his hands entirely.  "I know it seems a bit naff, but honestly, that is what I would do.  I don't care what anyone thinks."  He then resembled a pouting schoolboy but he was doing it in such a mocking manner that I had to laugh anyways.  

"God, Sess, that is a wonderful dream.  Sounds like something I would do if I had enough money and a man to settle down with.  If Inu never finds someone I wonder if he would mind doing it with me…" he was the person that I felt most comfortable with.  So why couldn't I live with him and just be comfortable for the rest of my life?  

"Could you really do that, Kagome, could you?  Could you sit there and live your life with a man who cannot possibly love you back?  Could you live your life without love and passion and someone who is your other half?  Could you live happily with Inuyasha knowing that you could have passed up the opportunity for even truer happiness than friendship?"  

Where did that come from?  I was just sitting here thinking of a very nice fantasy when he has to come in here and totally steamroll it.  And who the hell was he to be so suddenly knowledgeable in the ways of love?  This man who has had more sex than there are numbers to count the times!  And he blames me for spending a life in happy friendship giving up on love!  Honestly, I have never been so insulted.  

"Well, since you know me so well you should have foreseen this coming. Thank you for the dinner but I am going home."  I got up to leave but I didn't miss the look of complete surprise and shock that was upon Sesshomaru's face before he was running behind me to catch up.  I trounced out the door with him in hot pursuit and I idly wondered if he even paid the bill. Well, they maitre d was "intimate" with him; I'm sure so it would be taken care of.  

"Kagome, wait."  I kept on going.  I found myself crossing the street and going into the park.  There was a continuing border around the foliage and I had the distinct urge to balance on them.  It was one of those memories of childhood that I had; walking along these like they were some sort of balance beam and my daddy would be holding my hand just in case I did loose my balance.  I would smile and do little tricks like hop or skip or something.  That was the thing I hated most about growing up.  You had to just stop doing these childish things because they weren't what were expected of you anymore.  Your natural curiosity about life and everything on this earth had to be stopped once you hit the rip old age of eighteen and I hated it.  I hated the fact that I couldn't balance on these damn things and I was going to do it now because, gosh darn it, I wanted to!  So with Sesshomaru hot on my tail I took a detour and started to balance myself on the side of the fountain that found itself in front of me at the moment.  Pools of water splashed out of the side where I saw a crack in the fountain's wall.  Making sure to be extra careful, I walked just passed the crack when I felt someone right behind me.  And then it happened.  It was like the movies, all in slow motion.  I turn and my hair whips across Sesshomaru's face mid step, causing him to loose his balance.  Down he goes into the puddle and I just had to laugh. Making sure to safely step off the wall of the fountain I assess the damage: Armani pants permanently ruined, one leather loafer from Kenneth Cole and an Armani sports coat that was very sharp on him.  I think it might have been his favorite.  And I can't help it.  I laugh even more.

"What were you doing on the fountain with me?"  I manage to spit out between giggles.

"I was trying to catch up to you."  I continue to giggle incessantly.  I believe I even spout pigtails and braces for I begin to resemble a schoolgirl.  "Stop laughing at me!  It was all very confusing."  I laugh even harder so it is far too late to fight back when he has pulled me down into the puddle as well.  "Much better," he murmurs and I turn, for his face is far too close to my ear for my liking.  And turning doesn't make it better, for I just bring my face inevitably closer to his.  

And just like that we are kissing.  It isn't a romantic, sweep you off your feet kiss, but a friendly, reassuring kiss.  But hell, in the history of my kisses, Sesshomaru ranks to pretty much the top of the list.  He is gentle and caring and even though we are kissing I still cannot imagine going to bed with this man.  Well, yes, the thought does cross my mind, but not before I stop myself and pause.  Him, wanting to bed me?  Yeah right.  Then I pretty much loose that thought when he slips his tongue into my mouth and he tastes me for the first time.  I open my eyes and I realize that his eyes are closed.  Well, he is just a little too serious for me!  And I take a sopping handful of water and splash it in his face.  

"Taking advantage of a woman in need of assistance, Sesshomaru?  I never thought that was your style."  He groaned slightly and then answered,

"Oh, anything is my style if it has to do with you, baby."  And I can't help it.  It sets me off into giggle mode again.  

Finally the pair of us make it back to his car but he opts for taking a cab since we are both disgustingly wet.  We pull up in front of my apartment and there is no question of asking him up for coffee because he is just my friend.  He is, honestly.

"Bye Sess, I'll see you later."  He pulls me in for another open mouthed kiss and I cannot help that I laugh into this one.  He is just totally asking for it.  "Goodness, don't get too attached to my mouth, okay?"  He smiles tenderly at me and as I walk back to my steps he shouts,

"I already am…" and with that the driver leaves, taking the enigma that is Sesshomaru out of my sight.  What a strange and interesting night.

Blah.  I am at my mother's right now and I am so bored that the best I can come up with is thinking about socks.  Well, Martin is here and he isn't speaking to me because Mother hasn't come back from the store yet to get the bagels.  Goodness, every other morning she is here on time.  But socks…

_8/23/03___

_9:23 a.m.___

_Socks!  When I think of socks, a warm fuzzy feeling seizes my whole entire being—literally.  Not only is it aesthetically pleasing to find someone wearing socks, I go a step further: it completes me.  As my childhood dream was to become the sock fairy, the mere mention of socks makes my heart skip…a beat.  It is not a lie when I say that socks—yes, socks—give my life meaning._

_Now, I know what you are thinking.  And you are right.  I know you are thinking, "Kagome, the sock fairy isn't real, it is just your parents!" But I do not concur with this news.  The sock fairy is the bastard child of the earth, no one wanting to claim credit or association.  But I, I stand alone!  The sock fairy is real!  I know that socks aren't the "hip" thing to do these days (everyone is more into gloves these days—that premaddona won't know what hit her when the sock fairy comes to town!) _

_The underlying message: socks are my life.  Life is my socks.  Just socks and maybe, just maybe you will catch a glimpse of the meaning of my life.  I mean honestly, there are just so many to choose from; ankle, mid-ankle, tube, toe socks, tennis, soccer, volleyball socks.  The list goes on and on.  Frankly, I do not understand sock heads (i.e. sock haters) but life goes on.  It's a sock, sock, sock, sock, sock world.  (Reference to it's a mad…etc. world.)…_

Well, I do crack myself up sometimes.  But my mother interrupted my thoughts when she burst through the door in complete tears.  Martin rushed to her side and then brought her into the bedroom.  What do I do?  Did something happen to her?  Is there something wrong?  Martin comes back into the room and quietly leads me into the study.

"It has been happening a lot lately, Kagome.  I don't know, maybe she is just depressed or something.  But she will get better, I promise.  I think it would be best if you went home, she requested that.  I don't think she wants you to see her like this."  

I thank Martin and leave the house of my childhood, my tail between my legs like I don't belong there.  I can't believe I have been worrying over Inuyasha all these weeks and I haven't even noticed my mother's strange behavior.  How she forgets things more easily.  How she gets more irritable.  How her moods change so quickly.  But I didn't notice because my _friend was going to France.  My own mother.  I go home and there is a message from Sesshomaru asking if I want to go out again tonight but I ignore it.  Tonight is going to be slouching on the couch night and feeling slightly depressed myself.  I am going to ring Sango and ask if she wants to come over and have a binge with me like we used to in college.  But Sango can't do it and just as I put the phone down it rings again.  It's Inuyasha._

"Hello darling, how are you?"  I don't want to ruin his trip so I try to sound happy.  

"Fine, how is your holiday going?"

"Oh Kagome, it is unbelievable.  I am meeting the most amazing people and just spending all this time doing things that I want to do.  I haven't even been here for more than a couple of hours and I am already dying to go out and discover the city.  I ate dinner with these men who have the apartment next to me and they are just gorgeous…" 

And I can't help it, but I fade out.  I lie back down on my couch and sulk because Inu is having a wonderful time and I am sitting her being jealous of him and of everyone he meets.  And I am doing this when my mother is possibly sick. God, I feel so stupid.  I want to talk to him and usually I would have but I don't want to ruin his good mood.  I just want to be alone so mid rant I tell Inu that I would call him later and then hang up and disconnect my phone.  

"Tonight is for you, mommy," I say, helping myself to a bottle of red wine.  "Tonight is for you…" and then I vaguely remember crawling into bed about dawn totally drunk and without a care in the world.  And I have to admit that Sesshomaru's now deleted phone message and his recent smooch attack is the last thing on my mind.


	5. Couch Sessions

Hello! Yes, our favorite heroine is a bit on the dense side.  I mean, but honestly, she would have to be entirely too confidant and pigheaded to think that someone as gorgeous as Sesshomaru would want her—an overweight scientist who is in love with his gay younger brother.  I mean, it is a little far fetched, you have to admit.  But don't draw conclusions too quickly.  I said that Kagome is going to make a mess of things, and gosh darn it is she going to go out with a bang.  He he he, I am laughing over here at all the evil things that I shall throw at her.  Don't worry, I am pretty sure it is going to turn out well in the end, but it is going to be a long, hard journey, with things that you might expect, and some things that you won't.  But honestly, I don't have everything planned so I am just writing this as I go.  It is really fun just writing whatever comes to my mind so if the little "interludes" get a little random, just don't worry about it.  I am kind of thinking of a cool thing to do with them too…so just watch out for it.  

Okay, my dear friends, here is the next installment.

Read and enjoy!

-MC

----------------------------------------------------------

_10/20/03___

_5:45 a.m.___

_Life does the craziest things sometimes.  I think it likes throwing you a curve ball when you think everything is going so well or maybe so bad.  Just a small thing at first, maybe, like a random smile from a stranger.  Then it gradually gets bigger, maybe some stupid driver cussing you out or not a single red light on the way to work.  Sometimes it's the little things that turn people around; a little nudge in the right direction is all it takes.  Wouldn't you like to be that smile, that kiss, that hug, that laugh, that life?_

_------------------------------------------------_

Have you ever had that feeling that your head was about to explode and if you just opened your eyes your body might implode from the movement?  Well, that is what I felt like the morning after my wonderful romp in the alcoholic lifestyle.  Dear god, I didn't want to get out of bed but if I didn't there would be a wonderful display of my digestive pyrotechnics and I didn't think it was something I wanted permanently imbedded into my carpet.  This was crazy that I could actually have a coherent thought in the state I was.  As I passed to the bathroom I caught the time: 4:26 in the afternoon.  Shit, what the fuck was I up to last night?  After I finished cleaning my stomach of any possible fluids or food I had eaten in the last, I don't know, century, I was able to make it around my apartment in a generally cogent manner.  Bottles upon bottles were everywhere and I vaguely remembered that I had gone shopping to stock myself for a night such as this.  But at the time I think I rationalized it, saying that I was going to have some kick ass party where everyone else would get spectacularly drunk with me.  Instead I was by myself, cleaning up a mess that I made by myself and I felt like I had permanent brain freeze when the phone rang.  It was Sango.  

"Hmpapb."

"Woah, darling, what did you get up to last night?"  Funny, I was trying to remember the same exact thing!  "Did Sesshomaru fuck you senseless?"  

"Uhhhh…"  Did he?  I don't quite remember.  Maybe I didn't make this mess on my own and he was here but then it was like coyote ugly in the morning and he left me.  I certainly wouldn't blame him, I looked like complete shit.  And I mean the whole cargo, hair sticking up in odd angles with remnants of whatever I drank, crusty eyes which were starting to look redder by the minute (I'm not quite sure, it is slightly hard to focus correctly), and I was dressed in my most hideous clothing I had.  God, I hope he didn't fuck me, even though I don't love the man it would still be entirely embarrassing to be confronted with me in the morning.  Looking like this.  "I don't think so."

"Oh dear, I'm coming over.  You sound just awful."  And with that Sango hung up and I was left to wonder what the hell had prompted me to do this sort of thing.  Because it didn't happen often.  I mean, I drank, but I didn't drink to get drunk, it was more friendly, socialization drinking instead of anything else.  I rarely drank on my own.  Which made me a little frightened to think that perhaps Sesshomaru WAS at my apartment last night?  I wasn't given much time to think for Sango was over in about ten minutes and she was a little shocked at my appearance, especially since I pretty much stood in the same position I was when she called and the phone was still resting in my hand.  

"Goodness, just look at this place.  Just look at you!  Come on, get into the bath, I am going to clean up this mess."  I allowed her to lead me to the bathroom and draw me a hot bath.  She was in mother mode when she spotted me and I was surprised she didn't try to undress me.  I did feel pathetically like a child at the moment though.  I probably wouldn't have minded.  

I dimly registered the sounds of the vacuum being turned on, but I was too relaxed into my bath to mind.  God bless Sango, is all I have to say.  I sighed and then settled deeper into the comforting bubbles.  Ah, this is bliss.  

_10/13/01___

_3:11 p.m.___

_My favorite place is in __Mexico__.  It is a beautiful beach with white sand and the water is so clear that you can see all the way to the bottom.  I am in a white tank top and a pink, blue, and white wrap skirt sitting with my feet in the sand.  It is at night, the stars are so beautiful and clear.  I could almost see all the way to the end of the galaxy that night.  Then it starts to rain—lightly at first.  But then it pours.  As the rain whips around the palm trees I stand up, having the urge to enter the water.  I take off my clothes and jump in; enjoying the warm feeling the water gives me, balancing the cool water streaking down my face like tears.  I swim and just stand, allowing the waves to crash powerfully over my body.  There isn't another time where I feel so one with the world.  So connected.  I never want to leave the water, its salty taste burning my throat but making me happier than ever before.  I'm on vacation in __Mexico__.  I had snuck out of the tent that night to take a little walk on the beach we were camping at.  The night is so wonderful-no city lights to taint the perfect darkness that you can only receive in places such as these.  _

_Another place is in Mendocino.  There is a huge cliff where you can look down and just fall into the ocean.  There is pickle weed everywhere.  My parents and I would walk down from out campsite and just sit there, watching the sunset.  You take a seat and the earth gives way to make the most comfortable place to sit in the world.  I glance over to my parents and they have their arms around each other.  I suppose I am a "romantic" too, for I want what my parents have. Someone to hold me in their arms and just watch that sunset with me, and laugh at the different shapes the sun makes as it sets.  I glance over to the sun, looking at the line that it makes on the water, almost like a golden path that I could walk on and just step into the clouds.  I never feel more relaxed then when I am there, just watching the sun and thinking about nothing in particular.  Even though I am a happy, crazy person who laughs all the time a lot of people don't know the other side of me.  The side that contemplates life and tries to forgive herself for past experiences.  It isn't that a wear a mask-I did once but I won't ever again-I just don't show that side to many people._

Finally I left the bath feeling and looking quite decent, considering I was insanely drunk last night.  My apartment looked immaculate.  Seriously.  This woman is crazy!  But I love her.  Well, I love her but right now the fact that she did this for me is the forefront of my mind.  

"Thank you so much, Sango!"  She smiled from her place in my kitchen, cooking what smelled deliciously like cookies, brownies and even, no it couldn't be, oh yes it was—her famous lemon cake that is to die for.  Was I in the bath that long?  I was about to reach out a hand to get a cookie when I was unceremoniously slapped away.  

"Do you want to tell me something?"  I felt like I was five again!  You are not my mommy!  Awful bitch, teasing me with food like this.  What the hell did she want me to tell her anyway?  Oh, wait, did I just call my best friend a bitch?  My stomach growled.  No, I didn't call my BEST friend a bitch, my stomach did.  Shut up, you.

"What do you want me to tell you?"

"Why there are four messages from Sesshomaru on the phone and when you were in the bath he called again.  What happened?"  

"I don't know, maybe he had something to tell me about work or whatever…" Sango immediately laughed a little evilly.  I was kind of frightened.

"I don't think so, sister.  Why don't you listen to these messages yourself and see what you think?"

"Oooooookay…?"  Sango pressed the play button.  Immediately Sesshomaru's voice came out of the electronic device.

"Hey Kagome, its me, I mean, its Sesshomaru, well, that's my name, but um, anyway, I just wanted to tell you again that I had a good time last night and I hope that we can go out tonight.  Call me, bye."

"So…?  He isn't good at phone messages…What's your point?"

"Just listen!"  The force in her voice was amazing.  And I realized at that moment that my quiet and loving friend could be quite violent if need be.  

"Hi Kagome, it's me, Sesshomaru, again.  I guess that you are out or something.  But whatever you want to do, I'm here so call me whenever.  Kay, bye."

I was about to speak when she interrupted me.

"Not a word! Just listen."

"Hi Kagome, it's Sess, its Sesshomaru, yup, that's me.  Um, well, I guess you are over at someone's house or something, probably some female friend.  Not that you don't have male friends or something, but it's probably a woman. Yes, it's a woman.  Um, anyway, call me later.  Maybe we can do something tomorrow.  I'll see you at work, I hope.  Bye."

"Work?  But I'm holiday…"  Sango nodded.

"But just wait.  This ones the real kicker."  I started to feel a little nauseous again.  

"Hi Kag, it's me again, Sesshomaru.  I hope you alright, since you aren't at work.  Oh blast, that's right!  You're on holiday.  So that was why the boss looked at me weird when I told him you were sick…umm, I really want to see you, so call me back as soon as possible.  Bye sweetie.  I mean, uh, bye, I guess."

"'Bye _sweetie'_?  What is this about?"  And then it all came back to me.  That's right.  No wonder why he's calling.  We kissed and all.  This whole "friends with benefits" thing.  It was nice kissing him though. I wonder what Inuyasha would think if he heard me say that about his brother.  I can almost see his face now.  "Hey Inu, your brother and I have seeing each other for the past three years behind your back and now we decided to get physically involved.  But don't worry, it isn't romantic!"  Ha!  Can you actually think he would believe me?  I don't.  

"Oh, that.  Right.  We just kissed, that's all."  Sango turned me around and slapped another cookie out of my hand.

"'Just kissed, that's all?'  Just kissed? What are you thinking?"  

"What are you going on about?"  I said, thoroughly angry that she would try and take my cookie after I told her.  I felt like stamping my foot and pouting.  I want my cookie!

"What am I going on about?  What am I going on about?  Did you hear those messages?"

"Yes," I answered, finally able to sneak a cookie.  Ahh, yummy.  "We'rve justv friendsv.  Mnnmmh, cood, bery cood," I said between bites.  Well, perhaps more like through bites.

"Friends?  You call this friends? This man is so obviously in love with you! Why don't you wake up and realize you have something good here?"  I wanted to point out that I did realize I had something good here with these cookies but decided against it.  Sango did look like she would appreciate the compliment at the moment.  "You finally take another step in your relationship and she sits here and pretends its nothing.  Pretends that he takes out all these OTHER girls to dinner each week," she glared at me to punctuate this, "and that he kisses all those women too," another glance, "and not only that but after he kisses them, nothing more, mind you, he calls them, wanting to see them again!  You are a complete lunatic, you know that?"  

"Sango, you don't talk to him.  He is desperately in love with some unattainable woman of his past.  And why would he want me, me, an overweight scientist who is in love with his gay younger brother.  Which he well knows since I vent to him about it!  And secondly, he has called me sweetie before we kissed, we are just friends!"  A little white lie, but Sango needed to be spoken to rationally.  I mean, honestly, this was insane.  No one likes me.  Why would the ever gorgeous and ever available Sesshomaru want me?  When he could have about any woman he wants, he even had a chance with the woman before me.  I mean, Sango thought he was sexy, but Kouga was the only one for her.  But a girl could window shop, couldn't she?  

"Whatever, Kagome.  Just don't be surprised when he confesses his love to you. I got to go.  I'll see you later.  And call him back, for goodness sake."  I grudgingly kissed her goodbye and as she almost was out the door she turned back to me and stared at me for a moment.  "And I think you are in love with him too."  And that was that.  She was out the door and I was left to ponder what she had said.  Sincerely, what the hell is going on?  

I crawled onto my couch and decided to read for a while to get myself a little under control.  I didn't want to think about anything Sango said.  Because, if I was perfectly honest, I guess, physically, I had always thought Sesshomaru was the more attractive brother.  It had to do with that stoic, golden-eyed glances and the manner he held himself.  He exuded utter confidence and I guess that was very attractive.  He knew how to get what he wants and I liked that in a man.  But I had Inuyasha, right?  A little voice in my head poked through and supplied answer.  "Not anymore…he's in France."  Hmm…maybe I could humor Sango a little.  Just a little.

_9/20/03___

_12:17 a.m.___

_And finally, my favorite book.  Ah, my friend, I could go on for days about the books that I have read and everything about them.  So perhaps I should stick to my favorite authors.  I just read this book called "The Club Dumas" by Arturo Perez-Reverte and it is seriously such a good book!  I am still freaking out about the ending.  I was so in love with the main character, Lucas Corso, because of how much of a great character he is.  I mean, the man is just so complex and deep that I wanted to know him so bad.  He seemed like he would be an interesting character that I would never get bored with.  And the story was so amazing.  Corso is a book dealer that deals with the dirty dealings of the book world—and he just got his hands on a part of the real manuscript for Alexander Dumas' book, "The Three Musketeers."  As he tries to discover the authenticity of the document he gets caught in the book itself as it parallels his life.  Someone is trying to make a serial of his life and he is D'Artagnan.  He has a real Rochefort following him, a Milady to dishonor, a girl from a Conan Doyle mystery thrown into the mix.  He also must deal with another book and Corso then deals with the occult, the true devil and everything in between.  He must figure out who the author is before he is murdered—or worse.  _

_I really enjoy those characters that you can just relate with because they are in fact so real. However, I find on film that being too real can count against you.  But in a book, being real is something more easily identified with because you are reading it.  You can imagine the person to look or feel anyway you want them to.  It isn't handed to you on a silver platter and just served with wine and cheese.  In a book you must work at it—and your wine isn't always expensive and sometimes your cheese is moldy.  But you make due.  Corso, for me, was one of those characters.  He was a man that I would want to get to know a little better—someone who would only respect you if you deserved it and deserving it would be a feat in itself.  Someone who isn't perfect, not the drop-dead gorgeous hero, but a cunning little man who in his own way can make you swoon.  Through books I learned that not everything is as it seems, and not everyone is who they are on the outside.  I mean, I consider myself naïve-certainly.  I wouldn't doubt that at all.  My experiences are limited, my life sheltered and my world is small.  But the world isn't small.  In fact, the world is incredibly large.  It is funny that I never realized that before reading.  It's not like I didn't know there was a whole world out there—no one can be that dense, but I just didn't think about it, ya know?  I mean, __America__ has that big drawback.  Because we are so above all these other countries by wealth, opportunities and power Americans tend to think that __America__ is all that matters in the world.  And I guess that I did too. I mean, who really spends time to think about these countries that are just a speck on the map to you?  I certainly didn't.  I mean, even up till last year I still felt the same way.  I know __Mexico__ is being talked about a lot, but you're right.  It did affect me immensely.  I was so innocent schoolgirl before.  I mean, true, I still am.  But I've had a taste of the world now.  Going there made me realize that there are people dying and I am worrying about my body issues.  I felt so stupid.  I know that my problems are important—to my life, and I can't compare lives.  But still, it didn't stop me from feeling like a complete ass.  But still after all that, I know now that books are one of the most real things you can experience without experiencing it yourself.  I have learned so much from having my nose stuck in a book constantly.  I know you're probably screaming "YOUR SOCIAL LIFE!" and it's true.  I think a lot of my problems stem from the fact that I would rather live vicariously through characters in books than actually experience the world.  And then writing came into the mix.  "I have given my life to that, he said, throwing the book on the bed" a poet once said on his deathbed.  Was he regretting that?  I tried to think he didn't.  But it's true.  Even though books taught me to see life clearly, I need to smooth out the rough edges on my own.  I have to write my own book.  A book without words or pages.  A book no one can read.  A book that only I know the whole story.  A book where the ending isn't even predicted yet.  _

_So that was my tangent on books.  But I wasn't done with my favorite authors yet.  I like that historical fiction stories that intersperses fact with fiction.  I love that.  So, that leads to my next favorite author._

_Kurt Vonnegut.  Who can forget about Kurt Vonnegut?  I love this man.  He is so funny that I am giggling right now just thinking about the man.  I read "Cat's Cradle" and "Timequake."  Which I have to say, Timequake has got to be the funniest book I have ever read.  It is about Kurt Vonnegut himself, and his fictional alter ego, Kilgore Trout.  A timequake is a period of time that somehow repeats itself.  So, one day we just went back ten years and repeated everything we did for those ten years. It wasn't like we could change anything.  It was a rerun of everything that was happening.  But we were aware of what was happening and going on while we were going back through those ten years.  Through the story there are little random tangents that Trout or Vonnegut goes off on and they are just hilarious. I don't think I have ever laughed so hard at a book before.  Vonnegut has this strange way of just being funny in that totally nerdy way, but it still makes you laugh.  I love it._

_Another author I adore is James Herriot, who wrote "All Creatures Great and Small" which is a hilarious rehash of his days as a veterinary in the British countryside.  I laughed at his outrageous boss and Herriot's blunders in love and the veterinary practice itself.  I mean, who really wants to birth a cow in real life?  Herriot allows you to experience it through his first account of his life.  Oh boy.  It is great.  _

_Finally, I simply adore Dave Barry.  This man is officially off his rocker.  I mean, come on.  He is a loony.  But he makes me laugh.  I read his articles all the time and my mother and I listen to his books on tapes when we drive somewhere far away.  I mean, you have to have something amusing when you go on these long trips and I don't want to wear my headphones the whole time.  So we get books on tapes.  I think another good one was by Al Franken and it was Stuart Smally, which is hilarious as well.  "Daily Affirmations."  Oh boy. Don't get me started on that.  I can't even tell you!_

The phone rings at about nine o'clock and I don't think twice when I immediately pick up the phone.

"Hello?"

"Kagome!  I finally got you.  Are you okay?"  Oh come on.  Who do you think it is?  Of course it's Sesshomaru.

"Hey Sess, ya I'm fine.  I just had a massive hangover."

"Oh…did you go out last night?"  

"No no, I stayed in."

"Oh, did you have some friends or whatever over?"  Now here was something I wasn't looking forward to answering.  Do I tell the truth?  I decide it will sound naff that I said "yeah, I got totally ass-drunk last night by myself!" so I settled on a little white lie.  Hoping he wouldn't ask anything else about it.

"Yeah, just a couple."  

"Oh, anyone I know?"  What does THAT mean?  He doesn't really know any of my friends very well.  Well, he knows people at work, but would they really get drunk with me on a Sunday night?  I don't think so.

"No, no one you know."

"Oh."  He seemed to be saying that a lot lately.

"Are you okay Sess?  You sound a little, I don't know, down or something."

"No, no!  I'm fine.  I was just worried about you, that's all."

"Okie dokie, as long as everything's alright.  It isn't that girl, is it?"  I heard an audible sigh on the other side of the line.  

"No, no, it's nothing.  Can I just see you?  Can I just come over?"  Thank you Sango for making my apartment amazing.  And making dessert, well all that was left of it. 

"Yeah, sure.  Do you want me to pick you up or something?"

"No, I'm fine; I'll be over in a couple of minutes."  We said our goodbyes and I was left to prepare some dessert to sit on the coffee table in the living room.  I was just putting the finishing touches on the dessert platter when there was a knock on the door.  I should really give him a key like Sango and Inu have.  Miroku definitely doesn't have one though.  We all know what HE would do with it.  

"I'm coming."  I put down dessert on the table and then walked over and opened the door.  Sesshomaru was there, looking slightly desperate.  I don't know, but that lovely rumpled look he got when he was tired was absolutely adorable.  

"What's up, how ar—"

He was like a man possessed.  His lips were immediately on mine as he swung the door closed.  He kissed me savagely, desperately and passionately.  His arms encircled my waist as he continued his ministrations.  Soon I could feel his tongue forcing his way into my mouth and I could only gasp at this sudden onslaught of sexual torture.  It was totally different from our last kisses.  These were feverish and lustful as our last ones were gentle and slow.  His hands began to move over my body and I couldn't help the groan that escaped from my lips and into his mouth.  I draped my arms around his neck and pulled his head closer to mine.  

We continued on like this, lost in each other.  Just as my legs thought they might give way and I was feeling a little frantic myself as I ripped off his shirt, Sesshomaru collapsed on top of me, toppling us to the couch.  His hands were everywhere on my bare chest and they were roaming down the sweats I had put on after my bath.  

Finally we were both completely naked and he had just settled himself inside me.  He was whispering tender, wonderful things to me as he moved, the desperation gone and gentle caresses and passionate kisses took its place.  I felt so special at that moment, his golden eyes riveted on me and a look of pure and utter bliss graced his face.  

And for that moment I didn't care that he probably came over for this express purpose.  And for that moment I didn't care that perhaps I was being used as just a sexual release.  All I did care about was that I was here and he was with me now, not someone else.  

Eventually we fell asleep, after a little fun with the dessert that was on the coffee table.  Oh God, I mentally groan in my head before I fall asleep.  I am never going to look at this couch the same again.  


	6. Scoffing Tendencies

Hi everyone,

Sorry that it has taken so long in writing this.  I have been so busy with everything going on and having computer troubles and everything.  But do not fear.  I am working on another story which will come out after I finish CMAR which is almost finished in the annals of my mind.  Just need to get it into a computer.  So, don't worry my compadres.  These will be finished.  

As for this chapter, it is a little deep, I guess.  Well, okay.  It is really deep.  And it gets worse. I told you this story is different from my others, and since number one it is longer than the others but other than that it is also more real than the others.  It offers a perspective that no one has ever really crossed here.  Kagome: as a real life woman today in America.  Something to think about, I guess.  And with Kagome being this real woman she also has real feelings and problems.  Like the rest of us. 

So sit back and enjoy.  I hope it pulls on your heartstrings a bit.  After all…that is what it's meant to do…

Read and enjoy-

-MC

-----------------------------------------

_4/17/01___

_2:20 p.m.___

_We are on the threshold of the most wonderful things.  We are about to embark on the journey that is a part of our life—a journey that will take us to where we are supposed to be.  In all honesty, I am completely terrified.  I am terrified of what will happen, who I shall meet, who I shall fall in love with, who I shall forget and who I shall remember and most of all, I am afraid of loosing myself to someone I am not.  But I suppose that these are all, very real and very common fears when we must begin to live our lives as adults.  But most of all, I realize that we don't have the answers to these questions.  In fact we may never have the answers to these questions.  Which is something that perhaps is the best to realize.  I know that I have always wanted the answers to every question, know every puzzle and just be amazed of the knowledge that I would amass.  But then where is the mystery, the intrigue, the wonderful feeling of experiencing something in your own time, your own place and on your own journey?  If you know everything than what is the joy of living?  How will you conduct your life?  _

_So, here is to not knowing these answers and not knowing them in pride.  Here is to the life we have to the life ahead of us and everything that we must endure._

_--------------------------------------_

It was one of those moments that you really don't know what to do or say with what life has given you.  It was a time when I wasn't sure if I wanted to run away or stay.  I wasn't sure what I should do exactly, when I found myself in the position between habitation and department, the road you have chosen and another fork in the road.  What finally made me decide to react was the cold hard truth that what I believed drove me inexplicably towards it—I had to understand what drove him to come to my home, to seduce me with his kisses, to do what he did with me last night on the couch and on the floor and in the hall and in the bathtub and eventually, where we ended up; on the kitchen table.  Even though when I awoke we seemed to do it all over again, I simply did not understand it.  Why would a man such as he, a man who loves another woman, a man who is unbelievably gorgeous, a man who is so many things that is never attracted to a woman such as myself, why is this man sitting on my couch, his white hair thrown over the couch, seeming to be everywhere at once, and staring at me with that lustful look in his eyes, even as I sit here before him quite naked?  I want to be drowned in the lustful glow his eyes receive when he looks at me.  I want to bask in the glory of our consummated (many times over) mutual need to be with someone else.  

And that is it, isn't it?  That is the absolute bottom line and perhaps the reason, as we begin anew (does this man ever rest?) that I cannot leave but I cannot simply discover the reason.  I don't want to know the reason.  I don't want to discover, while he is kissing my neck, that I am just a fling, and that this person who shares a common bond with me will be lost to awkwardness later.  And perhaps part of me wishes that he feels the same way, that he wants to loose himself in someone so desperately that just about any human contact is the deepest comfort, a reason to get up each morning.  

And I won't delusion myself to the fact that he loves me or that I love him or that this is going to be a fairytale ending.  For once in my life I don't want to know the outcome, I want to be left in the dark.   

He left my house after he received an urgent call from work and he left me to my own devices.  Strangely, as he left, kissing me goodbye, I did not feel used or disgusted with myself.  I felt comforted, protected, if you will.  Whatever he had to leave for, I was certain that he would be coming back.  

And after that realization I didn't really think about it much.  I had so much to do, especially since I didn't have work to bog down my every thought.  Even though it was slinking in the back of my mind.  I suppose that was the problem with work in general.  You could go on vacation, you can get away but you can never truly forget that little piece of work that you left for after that supposed vacation.  And then while you are on that "vacation" all you can think about is that work that you didn't finish and it totally detracts from your relaxation!  

Goodness.  I need to call someone.  Or talk to someone.  Hmm…

As it turned out, no one was home except Miroku.  So, alas, I am to spend a lunch with him.  Even though he is one of my closest friends, I try not to associate with him on an alone level as much as possible, just to avoid potential messy situations.  

He took me to some little hovel in the wall that is an expert in delicious food for cheap prices.  Sadly, they are also an expert in attracting minimal audiences.  Too bad.  This curry was some of the best I have ever had, excepting at Tina's mother's house.  (An old friend).  She makes the best curry ever.  

"So, whats up?"  Uhh…sweat drop.  Should I be honest?

"I just wanted to see you."  Ah, flattery gets me anywhere.

"Don't lie, Kag.  Whats up."  Apparently not.

"Nothing, I just wanted some company.  I guess I am feeling a little lonely with Inu gone and all."  Now, that's the truth.

"And…"

"AND I needed someone to distract me from work."

"Now there is an answer that I can believe.  You were making me nervous.  I thought you had some amazing one night stand with some gorgeous man and you had to tell me to rub it in."  

"Rub what in?"

"That some gorgeous guy wants you."  What is that supposed to mean?

"Miroku, I really don't appreciate it when you beat around the bush like this.  I just wanted to eat lunch."

"I know.  Well, now that you are here, I wanted to tell you some news."  Oh, this could be good…"Hiten is back in town."  

You know that moment in the movies when some guy tells a woman the news that she is pregnant, or that he met someone else, or just something extraordinary?  The moment when the dainty salad the said woman had been eating slowly, freeze frame almost, the fork clatters to the plate while an expression of surprise graces her pretty face?  Well, I'm sure that my expression resembled some startled rabbit about to be shot by a hunter or something and I wasn't eating a dainty salad and a giant piece of curry chicken graced my fork instead of a solitary piece of lettuce (mixed greens, mind you) but still, I had one of those moments.  Clattering fork aside, I was in shock. My heart actually started to beat a little faster at the mere mention of his name.  Dear God.  Hiten.  My wonderful, beautiful, unattainable Hiten.  The man who I dreamed of loving for the rest of my life in high school.  Where Inuyasha was unrequited love at first site, Hiten was all heterosexual male.  Even though I knew he would never like me, I still held some notion that he would, could, possibly might be able to look my way eventually.  At least he liked girls…

_2/7/00___

_4:36 p.m.___

**_She is Like Me_**

****

_Her face is round and kind looking, although it's a little pale_

_Her words are very funny, which will never fail_

_She has a voice that is low and friendly_

_And her mother thinks she is very trendy_

_Her teachers think she has great respect_

_And she thinks she is a good person in most aspects_

_Her family thinks she is quite sweet_

_And her friends think she is the nicest person to meet_

_Her enemies think she is too outspoken_

_But strangers think she is a token_

_She has a mature mind _

_But also she can be far behind_

_Her silent crush will probably never fade_

_But to forget him is a sad trade_

_She would like to be a success in twenty years_

_And she is clever about friendships; reveals all her fears_

_She dreams about art_

_And she will always remember someone close to her heart_

_She tries to forget the hard times_

_But a life of pain is always a flip of the dime_

_Being hurt makes her want to hide_

_And she is really very pleasant inside_

_But she just can decide_

_Whether or not to show her humorous side_

Just brings back high school memories…

"Kagome? Are you alright?"  He was wearing a dove grey dress shirt with black pants.  Something that I supposed he wore to work, whatever that is he did.  Miroku always had this air of mystery to him that made him impeccably interesting.  I guess that was what drew me to him in the first place.  He was a smart man, keeping to himself most of the time.  But I found his advice and outlook on the world completely fascinating and most of the time correct. He spoke with such wisdom and experience, something that could only have come from books since he was so young.  I love men who read books.  He was leaning over the table; unwittingly getting his tie into his food a bit for it was loosened immensely around his neck.  I drew in a shallow breath.  What was wrong with me?

"Kago—"

"You look good."  He instantly drew back from me.  "I…I mean, you look better.  Have you done something different with your hair?"  I drew in another shallow breath.  God, my hands were shaking.  What is going on?  Does this happen just because there was a slight mention of Hiten?  Does he honestly have this much effect over me, after all these years?  "I need to go.  I need to go home now…I'm sorry."  I shakily got to my feet and left the restaurant in a hurry.  Miroku had barely any time to react and he still had to pay the bill for the barely eaten food.  God, I'm stupid.

I called a cab a couple blocks away and silently drove home.  Finally back in my home I collapsed on my bed—still made from the day before.  I hadn't used it the night before.  Obviously.  Tossing and turning, all I could think about were certain random and seemingly unconnected images.

Inu's eyes through his sunglasses when we were having an afternoon at the beach.  He wanted to tan a bit and I thought it would be fun for a little boy watching.  Too bad it was a hot day and all we got were burnt bodies and horrendous tan lines.  Inu's idea to fix that was another afternoon at the tanning booth, but I refused.  He came back looking like a god and I still had my tan lines.  Tan lines that lasted for the rest of the summer…

Sango and the way her face lit up when Kouga brought her flowers in her dorm on her birthday.  He had planned a romantic evening that every girl would swoon over and all Sango did was smile and laugh like she was expecting it.  I would have made love to the guy right there if that happened to me but then again I have always been a hopeless romantic.  Hopeless being the key word.

Miroku's hair as it slid across my shoulder when he withdrew from the closet after our little tryst.  The way it felt, slithering across my exposed skin and how, at the time, it made me shiver uncontrollably.  But it wasn't with lust.  I shivered in disgust at myself for not only hurting him but hurting myself.  How stupid and idiotic I felt for exposing myself for possible hurt and heartache.  How I never wanted it to happen again.  

Sesshomaru's face when he snubbed me that first night at the Kingston house.  How he looked like dirt could be more worthy than I am.  That even after anything I could do, wear the designer clothing, live in the gorgeous house; I would still be an outsider.  

And finally myself, in the mirror, looking at my body, scrutinizing everything that could be wrong with it.  Hurting myself physically and mentally, hating myself.  The look of determination in my eyes.  The absolute knowledge that I wasn't and could never be good enough for anyone, in my eyes.  The subtle destruction that ruled my every move…

_8/16/97___

_1:15 a.m.___

_But as I grew older, things began to change. My body began to change. Of course in the puberty sense, but as I grew older I_ _began to gain weight as well. I mean, I still had my friends, my parents loved me and life was okay. For a while. When seventh grade rolled around it was time for dances. I cannot tell you how excited I was. I would just imagine myself dancing with cute guys and loving every minute of it. But in reality, it was  
torture. At least once every month I would dress myself up; pay five dollars for three hours of being a wallflower. No guys asked me to dance. Which I didn't understand, I mean, I had always been taught that it's what is inside that counts and blah blah blah. And I was a good person, I was a little stubborn at times but it wasn't too bad. I almost laugh at my twelve year old self scrutinizing over my personality for a fault when the real problem was right in front of me, every time I looked in the mirror-my body.   
      There is an ideal of beauty that we all carry with us. And I didn't fit that ideal. I asked so many guys to dance only to be brushed off harshly. And don't get me wrong, middle school sucks to begin with, but when you aren't the ideal it can be worse. But trust me, if some fat kid asked my twelve-year-old self to dance the truth is, I probably would have said no. I didn't have my first slow dance with a guy until eighth grade was almost over. And it didn't really count because it was one of my friends.   
And soon enough having my friend's loving me for who I was just wasn't good enough anymore. At school kids younger and older than myself teased me. At the end of the seventh grade I fled to the bathroom to get away from these girls who used to be my friends. They would call me names pertaining to my weight. But I think the hardest blow was when the kindergartners adopted the chant of "Tubby, Tubby!" every time I passed by a certain group. Kindergartners.   
So that was when that ideal started to rule my life. That was when the ideal of being myself just wasn't good enough. So, at the end of eighth grade I resolved myself to this and had made plans to kill myself. I didn't fit the ideal, so I didn't deserve to live, right? I was still deciding between a kitchen knife or an overdose of Clorox when I decided to confide in my mother. I still had enough sanity in my mind that I could at least reach out for some help. Since we always shared things before this, my mother held me close and told me she loved me. But the ideal had taken root in my system. Her love didn't matter anymore because I wasn't pretty enough. I didn't love myself. I became numb because all that I now cared about was the belief of beauty that we see in beauty magazines. _

_I still didn't feel comfortable telling my friends about anything.  My best friend Kim was clueless about my suicidal tendencies, and I usually told her everything.  My grammar school friends weren't in the loop either.  And the rocky slope I had with my new friends was even more fragile.  I couldn't tell anyone.  I was alone._

Life.  I had to laugh at it.  Its mysterious plan.  Its uncanny way of making you hurt.  Life.  I scoff at life.  SCOFF! I just…I just…

_No passion_

_No expression_

_Last place_

_First race_

_Can't get out_

_Can't get out!_

_Die in peace_

_Live in hell_

_Love forever_

_Never dwell_

_Be yourself_

_On the way home_

Off in the distance, somewhere, the phone rang.  I didn't have the urge or the will to go and pick it up.  Abstractedly, I heard the message machine pick up.  And through the garbled and quick message I could distinguish one thing.  

"Kagome, come quick, your mother…your mother is in the hospital."

Life.

Can I scoff now? 

  
  
__


	7. Denial a River in Egypt?

Hey, ya'll.  How is everything going?  I know this has taken outrageously long but I am just getting into the swing of things again, so don't you worry.  I am trying to work in my free time as much as possible.  I hope you like this chapter, not a lot of action wise things happens, but I think I like this chapter and the set up and stuff like that.  So, enjoy and don't forget the feedback.  I love it.  And thank you profusely for all the reviews thus far, they are unbelievably awesome.  I cannot thank you enough.  

Read and enjoy,

-MC

------------------------------------

_9/24/00___

_3:09 a.m.___

_Have you ever pondered the meaning of your life and what exactly you are on this planet, this earth, this creation for?  Do you ever wonder if there is some deeper meaning to your existence, or do you think that it is just some crazy happenstance that you are here at all?  Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be inside someone else's mind and think their thoughts and believe their beliefs and speak their words?  Sometimes I feel like I just want to, for one day, get away from being myself.  Just looking around me I feel like there are all these people who are smarter, cooler and far more interesting than I'll ever be.  What if I was to go inside their heads and see what they really thought?  Would I find that they are as confident and interesting as they seem or would they turn out to be as insecure and embarrassed and confused as I am?  Would I, at deep analyzation, realize that everyone else puts on a mask, a front, just like I do?  I want so desperately to realize that.  But there is something in my mind, something that is constantly convincing me that I am alone, that I am confused and that I cannot be correct in any of my assumptions.  There is this terrible pull in my gut, there is this want, this need, this unnerving desire to be able to fit it, to feel okay about myself, to just do all these things at once that I am almost ready to crumble at the merest breeze of doubt.  I want to be free.  I want to be alive.  I want to be myself.  But this heart wrenching pain, this tear rendering reaction whenever I think about certain emotions I feel, I cannot help but desire to curl up into a ball and shut out the world.  I want to be alone but at the same time I want someone's arms around me, holding me, protecting me, enveloping me in their strength and love.  I want a beautiful relationship with someone who will do that, who will ignore my protests of being alright and just take the initiative to hug me, to allow me to be comfortable enough to cry, to just be me with.  I want someone to not form their ideas about me based on my appearance.  I want, for once, someone to look at me, look at the real me and tell me that I am beautiful.  I want someone to seek me out and want to be with me because I am someone who they enjoy being around.  I feel so lonely and afraid that I want to find someone but at the same time I cannot bring myself to find that person.  The pain in my gut coils and my headache fatigues me.  My heart flutters uncontrollably, wildly beating against my chest.  I want to pretend to be sick.  I want to know that something concrete is wrong with me so that I can fix it and be on my way.  I hate this indecision, this unknowing, this utter confusion.  I hate the lurch my stomach receives and the tightness of my throat restricts me from speaking my true mind.  I am incomplete and broken, but I do not know the cause of the damage.  When had I become so?  Why had I let myself think that I could be fine, that I must be fine, that I could continue to be fine without doing something to help myself?  What could I even do to help myself?  Was there anything?  I want to sleep, I want to sleep away the pain and hide under my bedcovers.  I want my mother to come to me and wrap me in a blanket and tell me a bed time story.  I want my father to be here with me and I want my cat to meow at me.  I want all these things that I cannot have.  I want to run away from my responsibilities and never face the world again.  At the same time I want to embrace this new life that I have.  I want to hold my burgeoning life close to my heart and run with it as far and as fast as I possibly can.  But again I miss my old life, I miss how things were before, I miss everything that has been going on around me, things that are familiar and concrete.  I want it all and I expect nothing.  I want to be completed but I remain broken.  What will happen if I shall always be broken?  How will I survive?  How will I continue?  How will I ever know if I am truly alive?_

-----------------------------------------------

You never know what to think, you know.  There is never that point where you just realize, woah, this is going on here, so, get used to it.  Well, for me at least.  And as you sat there, as I sat there, all I could wonder was what really was going on here.  You never really think that something like this could happen to you.  It is something that you see happen to a friend of a friend or some distant relative.  It never happens to YOU, yourself.  It's the type of thing that happens on television on some cheesy soap opera like show that is supposed to have no basis on reality.  But you aren't watching it this time.  This time, it is happening to people around you—it is deeply affecting YOU in every way possible.  There is something amazing at that actual realization.  That your life is supposed to be on some television show and that these people around you aren't real at all, they are "shop dummies propped up in attitudes counterfeiting life" (Plath).  There was something incredibly disturbing at the thought that my life could actually be a basis for a daily show that people would watch religiously and talk about with their friends that would be equally involved.  All the while they would secretly wish that their life could be just as dramatic.  But you never want this. Because this is life, I guess.  When a person dies on television, they are just leaving a show.  When someone dies here, they aren't going to show up on some sitcom or movie screen any time soon.  Actually, they never will.  Never.  

So this was my train of thought as I walked into the hospital that night.  Martin (?) wouldn't tell me what was going on over the phone but I could only suspect it had to do with my mother's obvious stress and altered behavior.  But when I was lead down a pathetically white hallway, stark in contrast to the colorful entrance of the hospital, my heart began to pound faster.  Finally, as if in a daze the hallway of white ended and I found myself in front of a door.  No one was around me.  I raised my head slowly, afraid to read the name on the nameplate.  

Psychiatric ward.

I was twenty-five going on fifty and my mother was clinically insane.  

Well, that had to be the conclusion one draws from being positioned in front of this door after a distressing call from your sort of father.  I mean, what else would you think?  That she decided to take a vacation and this is where my mother ended up?  I don't _think so.  _

So I opened up the door.  Martin was waiting by the door and so he quickly took my hand without a word and led me to my mother's room, I guess.  The ward was a veritable asylum, separated from the hospital by large, locked, steel doors, and a buzzer with an attendant that would buzz you in.  The walls were stark, furniture worn, and the rooms, humbler than a convent.  And it wasn't just the scenery, it was the patients; the patients were frightening.  They were hollow.  Seeing people who I didn't know, shallow and broken was one thing, but when you saw your mother, the nurturer from your childhood, empty inside, it scared me to death.  

She was sitting in her room with a vacant look in her eyes.  It all went by very slowly, it seemed.  The doctor came in and took my other hand and told me the problem in non-medical terms.  I remember looking deep into his eyes and wondering what the fuck I was actually doing here.  I remember wanting to desperately cling to the man and beg that he cure my mother.  I never wanted to see that look in her face again.  I never wanted to look at her like that.  The bare, whitewashed walls and stark furniture matched the constant expression my mother wore on her face: lifeless. It was almost as if my mother had become a turtle. She had somehow been frightened of something so on instinct she crawled into herself and left Martin and I holding the shell. She looked like my mother, talked like my mother, but the mind wasn't the same. Diagnosis: severe depression.

That night I remember looking as if I was hollow as well.  I barely spoke a word to anyone once I left the hospital, in a cab by order of the doctor, and ever since then I have sat here, in my living room, keys in my hands, jacket on and purse on my shoulder.  Just staring, dumbfounded, confused and utterly in shock.  What were you supposed to do?  I heard a knock on the door.

"Com—come in." My voice was raspy with lack of use.  The door opened abruptly and I almost paled even further at who now stood in front of me.  He looked so good.  So, clean, so fresh.  I didn't want to taint him with problems.  He didn't seem like he deserved it.  

"Kagome, why haven't you returned my calls? I have—"He immediately came to my side as I turned my face towards his.  Obviously, there was something wrong with my expression.  What if I had become hollow too?  Was it a disease that could be caught?  "Darling, whats wrong?"  He gently took the keys out of my hand and took off my purse and jacket.  He then led me to the bed where he gave me another searching look.  I sat down shakily, not really wanting to tell him anything at all, but sensing the need to, and the assurance that he would do the best he could to help me.  It had to be those liquid amber eyes; they settled my nerves.  

"My, my mother is in the hospital."  He kneeled in front of me and rested his hands on the side of my cheeks.  After stroking them he brought his hands to my neck and started to lightly massage it.  God, I needed that.  I hung my head forward to give him more access and then gave up as I sank into his lap on the floor.  

"Come here, baby," he whispered and I felt ready to doze off.  

"I missed you, Inuyasha," I whispered back, my head lolling into his chest before I was claimed by the sandman of my dreams.

_3/4/99___

_9:02 p.m.___

**_Just wondering..._**

_I have a question, God, which I'd like answered_

_Why do bad things happen, leaving you not so self-assured?_

_Why does the grass seem always greener on the other side?_

_Why am I so selfish and worry about my pride?_

_Why can't I be happy with who I really am?_

_Why can't I find that certain chum that will make me spurt my story like a clam?_

_Why do old people die, and young ones too?_

_Why does the sky have to be so blue?_

_Why does it hurt so much when he says no?_

_Why can't I just let things go?_

_Why do your parents love you so much?_

_Why do we pretend they don't matter or care about our life and such?_

_Why can't we have world peace?_

_Why would it be bad for a love and openness increase?_

_Why do friends grow apart?_

_Why isn't everyone good at art?_

_Why is death so scary, God?_

_Why do we put on this grand facade?_

_Why is life so worth living?_

_Why can't we all be more forgiving?_

_And finally, God, this is the question;_

_Why do you still love me after all I've mentioned?_

As I awoke to the painful memories of the day before, I tried to snuggle into the comforting atmosphere in which I found myself.  It smelled familiar, felt familiar and even looked familiar in the odd angles at which I could see.  Pressing down slightly on the chest to bring myself closer I deduced that this familiar atmosphere was a person, a man, and it had to be a Kingston brother.  There was that scent that people had to them, a certain smell, not necessarily bad or good, that went along with them.  And this, from whatever it was from; either laundry or otherwise, was what the Kingston's smelled like.  Fresh, clean and with a hint of authority, if smell could have authority over something.  But I suppose that if it could be done, the Kingston's would have found a way to make their scent superior to everyone else's.  It just seemed like some family ethic or whatnot.  Or perhaps it was just Sesshomaru that one night so long ago.  

Anyways, I was in the arms of one of the brothers.  Now, logically, Inuyasha was in France, although we could not rule out the fact that he could have come back.  But it is highly unlikely.  Second, it could be Sesshomaru, but if it is Sesshomaru, then I don't know if I can handle telling him anything right now not after everything that has happened between us.  This, in essence, is a problem in itself.  Because, well, yeah.  Let's not even discuss what we did together on this bed, well, no, not on this bed, but somewhere in the vicinity of my room, I think.  Damn it, it is a little too late to be thinking about what the hell I did with Sesshomaru!  I have my mother to think about.  My mother that has been…institutionalized, for lack of a better term.  Even though that term seemed to describe it well.  Damn well.

"Hey," a soft voice whispered in the general locality of my ear.  I shivered imperceptibly.  His breath was warm.  And my ear was…cold.  Turning my groggy head around towards him I tried to discern who the hell I was with.  But the gentle morning kiss that left me a little shivery afterwards told me who it was.  "Shhh, don't talk right now," he murmured against my lips.  I absolutely loved it when men did that.  When they spoke sweet things against your mouth.  Well, that wasn't particularly sweet, but it still got the job done and he was rewarded with another shiver. "Are you cold?"  Again, against my lips.  He pulled the covers over me more and then wrapped his arms around me under the duvet.  "Better?"  I would stop shivering if he wasn't practically kissing me every time he spoke and if my blasted lips weren't swollen with the teasing.  

And at that moment, I just didn't care.  I didn't care about my mother, about Inuyasha, about the consequences, about anything, really.  I grabbed his face with my hands and slammed his lips upon my own and began to kiss him mercilessly.  He replied with much the same vigor, as if his teasing had been dangerous to his HLL's (Healthy Lust Levels) as well.  And unlike the night before, this wasn't because he was frustrated and that I couldn't resist.  It was a mutual, burning desire, a need almost, to be reminded and satiated; a reminder that we both found comfort in each other, even though the comfort came in the form of sex.  

_2/13/03___

_2:40 p.m.___

_When one thinks about sex, I guess the first thought is who the sex is with.  You know, you dream of the person being your crush, your love, your obsession, whatnot.  But I guess I never thought of sex that way.  Sex, to me, in my dreams, was intimate.  My lover didn't have a face and instead of passionate lust there was this comfort, this happiness and this feeling of being at peace.  It was simultaneous giving and receiving; everything was equal, no one had power over the other.  In my dreams, my lover's embrace was what told me who it was, his breath on my lips, his tender caresses.  Everything he did and said told me that he was my soul mate.  And I guess that is what I dreamt about; the man who would, inevitably complete me.  And yes, there would be lust and passion present, but instead of sex we would be making love.  The kind of love that for a moment, nothing in the world mattered, not your job, your problems, your worries, your stress—nothing.  It was something that just completed you, explained your love for each other and allowed you both to revel in your love for one another.  Something that made you want to be with that person for the rest of your life, no matter the difficulties.  Something that transcends all rational thought, but at the same is simplistic in nature.  Something, something that I guess I just don't have now._

I woke up once more.  It seemed as if I was living a perpetual dream and I couldn't really discern what really happened and what was a dream.  I was alone in my room.  Did I have sex with Sesshomaru again?  Or instead, was the horrific nightmare the one where my mother was sick?  At the moment I wasn't quite sure what I wanted the dream and what I wanted the reality.  Either as a dream would be unusual and would be necessary for me to dwell on the thought for a while.  For, if nothing happened with Sesshomaru, then I would have to think about the suddenness of my obvious lust for him.  And if my mother was sick was the dream, then I would have to realize the fear inside myself of my mother's death.  On the flip side, if either one was real then I would have to think of a reality with a complicated relationship with my sort of love's older brother or the possibility that my mother might never recover from her depression.  

I think I am going insane.  

Perhaps I am the one who went insane and I am configuring this weird universe in my mind and in reality I am sitting in some whitewashed room making therapeutic crafts that don't help with my insanity at all.  

Okay, perhaps I just need to breathe, relax, and think for the best.  Perhaps everything is fine.  Everything is normal, sane, and I am just worrying over nothing.  

But I know that I can't sit here in my bed and just think that things are okay. I have to go out and do something to prove that things are okay, or perhaps just to prove that I am alive and this is not just a perpetual dream that I cannot wake up from.  

I wandered around my apartment and just touched things.  You know when you do that thing in the movies, where you touch a picture or some item and it seems to take you back to that time or memory?  It was like I was doing that now.  I went over and _he laughed hysterically until I couldn't help but laughing touched the _too, us laughing together over two large _hat that I wore with Inuyasha when we went line dancing.  Or the time when __he was holding my hand, breathing on my neck and it brought shivers down my spine we went to the beach and just walked along the sand.  Or when Sango and I just _lying on the warm deck, the air so crisp and ripe with purity _took a cruise to Australia.  When Miroku took me __his hand was gently running through my hair, whispering…to some play or other but we didn't even watch it.  I had all these pictures around me.  My fingers grazed the _his fingers burned with their touch, white heat spread everywhere he went, his eyes alight with some deep desire _book Sesshomaru let me borrow the last time we went on our Tuesday dinners.  It seemed so long _he delicately licked my neck, nipping and caressing me with his teeth and tongue _ago that we went on our Tuesday dinners even though this, this supposed reality had been happening __burn, burn, hot, passionate, fire, fire…comfort only for less than a week now.  And now, now _heart pounding, beating against my chest, pleasure, pain, surrounding me _all I could think about was that time, or times.  It had been so vivid, so lucid, so real.  Had it all really been a dream?_

Sesshomaru walked through the front door and swept me up in his arms and kissed me.  He smelled of a scent that was uniquely him, something that both brought me desire and comfort, but I figured it was because it was so close to Inuyasha's smell that I had to take comfort in something while he was gone.  This reminds me, he hasn't called me in a while.  I hope everything is going well…not EXTREMELY well, but good enough that he is having a fun time and not having hot gay sex every night with people he doesn't know and then getting a beautiful French boyfriend and he just forgets all about me.  Nope, I'm not worried at all.  Not at all.  

And with Sess being here, it meant that this, at least, wasn't a dream.  This probably meant that my mother wasn't really sick which, of course, to say the least, was definitely a good thing.  A very, very good thing.

"Darling, your father called while you were sleeping.  He was worried about you from yesterday.  Are you okay?  I was worried…" What happened yesterday?  Did something happen?  I remember crying, and being depressed and thinking I was… "So I don't know if you want to see your mother just yet and I told him that.  But whatever you want—"

"What did you say about my mother?"

"Do you want to visit her today or tomorrow?"

"Where would I visit her?"  This was not shaping into how I thought it was be.  

"The hospital.  Come on sweetie, it's alright…"

But I wasn't listening.  Denial obviously wasn't just a river in Egypt.  


	8. Lucid Destiny

Heh heh heh, I am eeeeeeeevil and reading this you shall know why.  The next two chapters is when I actually have an idea to what I want done, unlike the others where I am mindlessly wandered throughout the life of Kagome, Sesshomaru, Inuyasha and her friends and family.  Actually, perhaps my evilness will not even be apparent until the next chapter but it is coming and I just wanted to tempt you with the inevitable "shit hitting the fan" shape of events that is coming soon.  And I know many people were confused with the whole Kagome saying "Inuyasha" last chapter.  

…

I am not commenting on this.  Just read, go on, read, and all shall be explained.  Well, not everything, but on that point it will be explained.  So read and drop a note.  

AND CHECK OUT "SWORD PLAY"!!!!!  It is Kag/Sess as well…funny at sometimes and deep at others, but not as deep and true to life as this.  As for a "CMAR" two…I am going to write it after I finish sword play…and if I get more reviews then I want to write faster and then the end will come faster and then I can start "CMAR: Two" faster.  If that is what you people want…

Okie dokie, I'm sorry that I am resorting to these levels to get reviews but I really like SP and the liking of that story seems to be a little thin.  Although I thank everyone who reviewed that story.

On another note, thank you so much for the feedback on this story, it is truly amazing and inspiring.  I like to write original works but even this was a little test to see if people would actually enjoy something that is so painfully true to life that the readers themselves cannot help to relate to it.  I honestly am astonished at the sheer number of people who have e-mailed me after reviewing wanting to discuss things in the story and comment on certain aspects that were more intimate in nature.  Wow, thank you so much.  Please continue to ask your questions and speak your mind—I am open and feedback is much welcome.  Without further ado—

Read and enjoy,

-MC

P.S. On another note, I wrote a one-act play with my friend called "It's All Up Here" and it was performed for three nights in a collection of one-acts by new playwrights.  Not only did our one-act get astounding reviews, people actually came up to us and told my friend and me that our little one-act was their favorite out of the five others in the show.  Also, the shows sold out all three nights and we had to turn people away.  I just wanted to say congrats to my friend and myself for our playwriting debut that was an awesome success!  Anyone interested in reading it—e-mail me!

Thanks!

--------------------------------------------

_Isn't friendship strange?  I mean, it is normal to have friends and everything, but at the same time, it is just so strange.  Now, stay with me here.  I am thinking that it is so strange that we can come to depend and love someone so much who isn't related to us by blood or by marriage vows.  (Now, marriage is a whole other can of worms I am not touching right now…not in the mood for fishing at the moment) I just think about it because I guess it is so strange to come back from college and just think…there are people here whom I love so desperately but I haven't seen in about three months and I am used to seeing them practically every day.  And how can these people that I haven't seen for three months take me in their arms and hug me and just love me.  It is so weird, if you really think about it.  Just, what is friendship?  You know, not that friendship that is just friendship but that _friendship_ where you would genuinely do anything for someone and that it physically hurts when you realize that you will have to leave them again and not see them for another three months.  And in that time they will again take you in their arms and accept you back into their lives regardless of what happened to you in college, what you did there and if you aren't the same person you were before.  It is extraordinary to think about.  That no matter what you do in college, it doesn't seem to touch them—the people back home.  I mean, there are always exceptions to the rules but in general, college is a personal experience and people at home cannot fully comprehend what really goes on there—even if they have been to college themselves.  I mean, it's crazy.  I mean, to know, absolutely know that this person will always be there for you.  I have that, amazingly.  But still, it's weird.  To think that this person will do anything for you and that the feeling is likewise.  It is just crazy how things happen like that.  And how you meet the people who will become some of the most important people in your life.  Like, when you say that you would like to do something with this person when you are older…as a joke or whatnot…like "when we're twenty-one, lets do this…" or "I am so going to do that at your wedding…" or "Your kids can call me Auntie Gabby and they can call me Auntie Kim" or etc.  But instead when you say these things, instead of that feeling in the back of your mind that says "even how much I want this, I don't think we are going to be friends that long."  I am talking about the friendship where you abso-bloody-lutely KNOW that this person is going to be in your life that long. Because, if they aren't, then you don't know how you could survive.  That is the kind of intense friendship that I have.  But, it's insane to think about that you can feel that powerfully about someone that isn't in your family and they aren't going to be your life partner in marriage.  Instead, they are your life partner in friendship.  The person who knows all the nerdy, stupid, dorky things you've done and they still love you for it.  The kind of people that are there for you no matter what.  The kind of people that make you, in essence, you.  _

-------------------------------

Things never went as they are supposed to.  Life is just that way.  You wake up one morning and you think…when I was five, ten, fifteen, didn't I think I would be doing something else at this moment?  For me, I never really knew what I wanted to be.  At five, my dearest aspiration was to be a fish.  At fifteen, all I wanted was to be noticed by boys and so I couldn't even be bothered with the logistics of my future.  And now, now I am sitting here and wondering, why didn't I have dreams?  Because, I must have had something that I wanted to do…something I passionately believed and was heartbreakingly aware that there was something that I was meant to do in the world.  But I don't remember ever feeling that way.  I got into my line of work because I seriously wanted to give my mother back something that she gave me in my life.  I wanted to give her a comfortable living and a happy retirement.  And now that she has that, I honestly don't know what I have left for myself.  What does this mean?  Did I just do something that I happened to be good at to get rich but now I am stuck at an overpaying job that I despise?  Do I really despise my job?  I mean, I never thought so but when the day approaches when I have to go back to work, my heart and stomach clench in that strange feeling as if I am being pulled inexplicably towards this force—and I don't appreciate the pull at all.  I guess it is just a little disappointing to think that work is this painful for me, that I can't feel like I accomplished something I at least love no matter how hard the work is.  It reminds me of how my father was before he died.  He did blue collar work and even though I was immensely proud of his work I was struck by the depressing feeling that he hated it.  Or that he had these dreams, these wonderful, beautiful dreams in his life and he gave them up so my mother could finish college and that I could go to private school.  It just made me so sad, so damn sad that he sacrificed his life, his passions for the sake of his family.  No one worked harder than my father.  He did everything in the house.  I remember thinking offhandedly before he died that if he ever left us I didn't think we could survive.  And, goodness, we barely did.  I had to learn responsibility like I never knew it before.  I had to learn how to cook, clean, do bills and everything else in-between.  I had to sacrifice regular childhood memories and friendships because I needed to help my mother at home.  And the pain, the pain was unbearable.  How could we survive after being taken care of for so long and so well by my father?  My chest constricts and my heart clenches painfully even today.  He, he, he was my friend, my buddy.  He called me princess.  He called me pie face.  He gave me leggos and Ninja Turtles.  He made my lunches.  He drove me to school.  He was my Daddy.  And he left me…

And now she is trying to leave me too.  She, her, my mother, my Mommy.  She is sitting in some room of the hospital not being herself.  I can almost see her face now; staring off into space, eyes glazed over, mouth hanging slightly open as her hands rest limply in her lap.  She practically screams helpless! from every orifice of her being.  I cannot even begin to know how to help her.  And that is what makes me so scared and frightened.  I couldn't do anything for him either.  I couldn't will away his disease, I was completely helpless in the face of such treachery.  And now my mother is going to be taken away.  She is my last link, my family, my mother.  I don't honestly know what I would do without her.  How could I, how could I survive a blow like this?  What would I do with myself?  Where would I be?  Stuck in a job that I am beginning to realize isn't me and an orphan in this cold, cruel world. I wanted to crawl into a hole and be forgotten.  I want to have no responsibilities and be a little child again, carefree and innocent—not aware of the dangers and disgusting sides of life.  I want to be that little girl, that little child that made me see the fun and interesting aspects of the most inane things like mud, carpet and cardboard boxes.  I want the ability to just forget everything that I have learned and just be who I was so many years ago.  Do you think this is possible?

My mother had been given permission by the doctor that she was allowed to take walks with Martin and me, as long as one of us held her hand.  She walked slow and deliberate, as if she had to make every step count, heel to toe, heel to toe.  I wanted to turn around and hug her, kiss her, slap her—do anything that would make her snap out of this crazy disease that made my mother do a disappearing act.  I wanted to show her how much this hurt me, how much this was bringing back the memories of Daddy—how much I was holding back the tears even now.  I wanted to rip her hand from Martin's and scream into her face about the injustice of leaving is and how I need her to be there for me when I am dealing with the weirdness that is Sesshomaru and I, how I will never take her for granted again and how I never want to loose her like Daddy.  I wanted to tell her how important she was to me and how much I loved her but there was nothing that I could say to her that she could comprehend.  Nothing, absolutely nothing.  

As I left, Martin followed me outside the ward, stopping me in the long, dark hallway that separated the "crazies" from the rest of the hospital.  

"Kagome…um, the doctors wanted to tell you that they were thinking over the possibilities of your mother's disease and they came up with a new diagnosis.  It seems, it seems as if she is bi-polar."

I wanted to laugh under my breath like a cruel wolf1 and forget that those words were ever spoken.  Yes, I knew that her disease was most likely not merely depression, but I never thought that she would be bi-polar.  Ice cold chills swept into my lungs as if I was freezing from the inside when I remembered exactly why Martin was being so cautious with me.

"Are you saying that this—this could happen to me when I'm her age?"  I whispered, unable to speak at normal decibels.

"Kagome," Martin said, taking my hand in his, "they don't really know much about this disease yet, and it's a little confusing to predict anything, but yes, being bi-polar is genetic, they believe." 

Sesshomaru said he would pick me up I told him as my hand fell limply from his.  I didn't want to be taken care of by Martin, the husband that replaced my Daddy and the man who now, with my mother as she is, might be the only man who is my family.  Not my true family, but the closest thing that I would have left to a family.  I sat down on the curb outside the hospital and waited for Sesshomaru to pick me up.  He was on time as usual—the man seemed to have a penchant for orderliness and would accept nothing less than perfection; which, ironically, never seemed to bother me when we were together.  I was the person far less than perfect and I never felt less than comfortable with him.  It was as if he had allowed me into his life, giving it a bit of the chaos necessary for survival.  Perhaps I was a replacement, a replacement for the rebellious and crass attitude he adopted when he was young.  But it honestly didn't matter to me.  I had a man whom I felt comfortable with and he seemed to enjoy my company enough.  

I didn't want to speak out the possibilities of this ever happening to me.  I didn't want to think that I could leave my child and husband (if I ever got married or whatnot) and live a life where I was lost under the sway of genetics.  I didn't want to think about any of this at the moment.  I didn't want to consider the fact that this was something I would have to discuss with someone if the relationship really got serious.  Would this affect their feelings for me?  Would they decide that we couldn't be together because of this?  Overanalyzing was a bitch and I needed some good old therapy Sesshomaru style.  

As we drove home to my apartment, I moved my hand to rest on his knee, and he turned to look at me.  He smiled, one of his rare, helpless smiles that he didn't seem to like to show anyone because he didn't like being helpless, that much I knew. He has been so kind to me lately, picking me up and taking me to see my mother almost every day.  He spent the night with me every night even though he had to leave in the mornings to go to work.  We didn't talk much, but instead I found comfort in the silence and companionship he offered.  I didn't have to think about anything when I was with him.  It was so easy just to sit and be with him.  It was like we weren't even in some sort of relationship at all, but we were two people who decided to make an arrangement; an unspoken arrangement that just spoke volumes in its silence.  I liked our arrangement.  Sometimes he would get this far away look in his eyes and turn to me as if he wanted to say something, but thought better of it.  It seemed like he was struggling with himself over some unknown battle that I wasn't involved in.  But he continued to stay with me and keep watch over me, almost.  He would hold me in his arms after we had sex and sometimes he would just want to hold me until I fell asleep.  And when my breath evened out he would get up and work on his cases from the piles of books he had brought over and lined up in my bedroom and that spilled out into the hall.  I knew this because I couldn't sleep much, especially with everything going on.  I was half afraid that if I would sleep I would wake up and be like my mother, or I would be asleep when someone called to say that she had snapped out of it, or in my slumber I would dream of Hiten and that was never a good thing.  I hadn't forgotten that Miroku, who hadn't called me since that day, told me Hiten was in town.  I couldn't get the notion that it was fate, that there was a reason why Inuyasha was out of town, that perhaps I was finally get the romantic prince that I wanted with Hiten.  Even though Inuyasha could never happen, and subconsciously I know its true, the only man who I thought could ever steal me away from him would be Hiten.  Maybe it was because I loved him before Inuyasha and he was my first love or something.  But I don't think that was the thing that was really bothering me when I slept.  Because, when I slept I had lucid dreams, I had these dreams that scared me, that made me afraid to be asleep in fear of dreaming them again…

_10/24/2003___

_3:49 a.m.___

_She stands a little in from the doorway as if she isn't quite comfortable coming in all the way.  She has a backpack on, full from books, so many that she is carrying some in her hands as well.  She stands casually, with one foot carrying all the weight while the other sits off to the side.  She looks comfortable, but it seems like there is an underlying current of confusion or desire to know the knowledge that I give to her.  She isn't a normal color for a human. In fact, she seems almost whitish.  Her form doesn't waver and it isn't apparition-like, but her skin just seems to illuminate in some fashion that gives her this whitish glow.  She seems familiar to me, the kind of friendship you feel when you have met the person a couple times and don't know each other's bad faults yet to be disappointed in their character.  It seems like you have had a few chats with this person before, perhaps met a bar and had a pleasant conversation and maybe bumped into each other shopping one day.  Her face isn't apparent to me, when I notice her, I don't look at her face, and rather I notice her whole being.  When I speak to her, I am in this half awake half asleep state where I don't realize that there could be no one in my room at this hour at that my door is always locked so she couldn't have walked in but I am awake enough to think that I am actually talking to someone.  When I talk to her, it seems absolutely imperative that I explain or speak on the issue that I was asked about or just simply speaking of.  And its not like I simply start up a conversation, rather it seems when I speak, it is either the middle of my thought process on the subject or the middle of the conversation with her.  So it seems like I have been speaking to her for a while.  _

_The first time I was to give her and some other people directions.  I don't know or remember where they were going, but I do remember actually sitting up on my bed and speaking to them.  The thing that roused me from the conversation was that when I asked them something, they didn't answer, and I actually said to myself "Oh, I am just talking to myself" and then went back to bed._

_The second time it seemed like it was just the girl, and we were discussing something but it was a general topic, it didn't seem like I was bearing my soul to her or her to me.  It was simple banter and again I was sitting on my bed facing towards her.  The thing that roused me from the conversation this time was the fact that Sesshomaru heard me and said "go to sleep, there is no one here, go to sleep."  I don't know how many times he repeated this, but it took a while for me to understand that there was no one in our room.  _

_My fears on this subject are that I am not getting enough sleep or that I simply miss Inuyasha so much that I am replacing him with someone in my dreams.  But I cannot shake the feeling that the girl is some girl at the office, even though I don't know her.  I kind of recall the girl's name in my dream to be Kikyou, but I'm not sure I am just speculating after the dream or if I am actually thinking this.  Another fear is that perhaps I am being visited by some apparition that wants me to help her out or whatnot.  This is the scariest thing because I have never been known to speak to anyone in my sleep.  I used to sleepwalk, but I was never lucid enough to remember anything that went on.  But here I remember details, how she looked, the general idea of her and I am even awake enough to remember what we generally spoke out.  And now this thing has occurred twice, with the same person, as if we were friends or something.  She doesn't seem to want to do me harm, but still, I do not want to sleep at night, for fear of meeting her again…_

The phone rang as he kissed my neck and up my jaw.  I went to reach for it but he quickly linked my fingers with my own.  And then he ran his tongue over my lips and I turned and nuzzled his neck with my nose.  He growled loudly as I playfully bit his neck and the answering machine picked up simultaneously.

"Kagome, darling, pick up the damn phone.  I came all the way back to see you and you never seem to be here.  What is wrong?  I called your cell about ten times today but god knows you never pick it up.  I've left about five messages on your blasted phone here but to no avail.  Where the hell are you?"

Sesshomaru was ignoring the message machine, I guessed, for he was still moaning a little as I continued to take off his dress shirt and run my hands along his muscles, tickling his stomach gently and sucking on his neck.  But I paused as I heard the next comment.

"Honestly, and after I came over the other day I was sure you would call me or something.  I came home specifically for you because I heard about your mother.  I am so worried about you.  You looked completely dreadful and you just collapsed in my arms.  I had to go pick up my luggage at the airport on the penalty they would dispose of it so I had to leave.  But I left you in your bed, all snuggly. Darling please call me I really—"

"Who is this?"  I asked into the phone that I jumped up to get, clad in my bra and slacks that I wore for the day.  The question was unnecessary but I felt the need to ask it anyway.

"Sweetie, you know its me, come on.  Has a whole, what?  Week, two weeks, three weeks or whatever in Paris made you forget your best friend?  I hope not!"

"Inuyasha…you're back…" I whispered into the phone, my eyes locked with certain amber orbs that resembled their younger sibling's.  He looked so beautiful at that moment, his long, silver hair spilling over his shoulders as he graced my bedroom floor (we never seemed to make it onto the bed) and for that one moment I wondered what it meant to him that Inuyasha was back.  And what did it mean to "us," whatever "us" was.

Inuyasha was back.

My stomach clenched uncontrollably.  What was this I was feeling now?  


	9. The Unwanted

Hi everyone. I have been so busy and this took me long enough to write as it is. I think this is a pretty pivotal chapter. But something tragic happens in the next chapter, so just wait! I hope you enjoy this next installment and don't forget to write!

Read and Enjoy,

-MC

P.S. Thank you for the reviews, I love the support!  And I dedicate this chapter to Bruka-chan, who is my new beta and motivates me to keep writing.  Striking Falcon and Suppis Tenshi are in the mix too.  I love you all!  

------------------------------------------

_11/3/02___

_6:20 p.m.___

_I never really liked to believe in the make believe, but there was nothing that could be done. I was just lost in the fantasy that my knight in shining armor would come, riding on his white horse and swooping me up into his arms and just escaping away with me while battling dragons and the like with his mighty sword. I wanted to be rescued, loved and cherished for what I was and for the mere fact that I deserved to be saved from whatever fate an evil witch or wizard deemed necessary for me as I sat alone in the dark, dank cave of my existence. I wanted the knight to kiss me and awake me from the dream that is my life so I can finally start living life as it was meant to be; with love and light and happiness and lots of stupid pathetic thoughts that made me want to melt if I was really honest with myself. I wanted the fairytale, the whirlwind romance, the end all be all, the lovely love that meant everything to you and most likely ended in your lover dying if it was to be some cheesy romance book or something. I hated that. Why read depressing literature, life is honestly depressing enough? But when your reality becomes that of a book, what can you do to get yourself out of the illusion? When do you get to the point where enough is enough and you realize life isn't a book and life isn't a fairytale? When do you realize that all men are not going to sit there and sweep you off your feet and then slay all the demons you have coming in your life—and even in your past as well? When do you get to the point where you realize that nothing is as it seems and it isn't some cheesy reference to some governmental cover-up thriller? Or what is the "take home message" as one of my monotone college professor's once asked? What can we conclude from this mode of thinking, that life is not really what you want it to be, it isn't the dream that you grow up on and base your whole childhood upon. What do you do when the final shreds of your innocence are discarded in the realms of adulthood and you must admit to yourself that knights on gallant steeds and princesses imprisoned in towers and even true love is just a figment of your imagination; a fantasy, something that has no sway in the real word? What do you do when the world as you knew it crumbles before you and all that you have left is the notion that you once believed in a beautiful thing like love but now you've become so cynical that you are afraid you might never find the passion and desire, the love and the comfort, the pain and the rapture of true and unending love? And then you have to ask yourself the question; what really is life, and conversely, what are dreams? Are we simply living a perpetual dream that we can never wake up from, or are we living in the real world, living as people who are sentient and able to feel? What is life anyways? And why are we made to experience the devastation, the feelings, the pain and the exquisite torture of what life really may be, if this world is even the real world? _

--------------------------------

I hung up the phone with Inu and I just sat down on the edge of the bed with my back to the sex god still on my floor. The mood of earlier was gone…I didn't really know what to do with it. I pulled on my button-up sweater and clothed myself again. He was still there, breathing heavily, but not moving, quiet like as usual. And then there was the rustle of clothes and I didn't turn back to see if he was putting back on his clothes or not because I knew. He was leaving me, now that I had Inuyasha. He was leaving me just like all the other men left me. I don't know if I could handle that. My head screamed that I didn't need him, that he was simply a distraction, an unnecessary part of my life but the tightening in my stomach at the thought of him not near me hurt more than my mind could comprehend. What was going on?

"Sesshomaru, I—"

"Shhh." He brought his finger to my mouth and traced my lips. He scooted me back on the bed and then straddled me, not resting any weight on me, but still above me, hovering almost. Seeing him without his shirt on, visible bites and red marks on his neck and chest made me a little sick. As he leaned in to kiss me, it felt wrong, unnaturally wrong. It felt like I was using him, using him for comfort in this sexual way, and that even though he might be using me—I couldn't drop the feeling that he had some investment in this "relationship" that I didn't quite understand. But he kissed me so tenderly, so gently that my lips had to brush over his slowly as well, quivering from the minute contact. I felt unusually hesitant, wanting to be held by him—without the inevitable sex that either came after or before the holding. He started to unbutton my sweater again, kissing the skin as it was revealed to him. When he reached the top of my bra he paused and then spoke.

"What are…we…going to tell…Inuyasha?" He said through unbuttoning my blouse and alternately kissing my skin. 

"Tell Inuyasha about what?" He stopped kissing and looked up, golden eyes connecting with mine.

"About…about us," he said earnestly and something lurched in my stomach again. That took me by surprise. What was I going to tell Inuyasha? Nothing, most likely. Isn't that what he wanted too?

"Do you think there is anything to tell?" And then I saw it. The most emotion I ever received from him before. His eyes narrowed and yet it wasn't from anger, it seemed to be deep contemplation and if I didn't know better (which I did) I would have thought tears were threatening to fall. 

"You're right. What would there be to tell? What was I thinking?" He silently closed my blouse and delivered a swift kiss to my lips before he dragged on his dress shirt. "I have to go do something at the office…but I will talk…to you later. Bye, Kagome." And as he left me this time, without another glance I somehow felt it was like he was closing the proverbial door to something I should have left open. 

He didn't come back that night after work or whatever it was he was really doing. It hurt, a little, you know, it really did. I mean, it shouldn't have hurt because of the simple fact he didn't ALWAYS sleep over and that Inu was here now and I could give up this little stupid thing with Sess, right? However, with everything going on around me with my mother and with my strange feelings towards everything it felt like he was leaving me alone, alone to face the world. Just like my father did and my mother was doing now. I guess, even though I could never admit it to myself when we were together, was the simple, simple mad truth that I needed him now. And that scared me. 

After a couple of days I holed myself up in my house and didn't do much else than read or write or something to that extent. It felt as if we had broken up, even though we were never together in the first place and he hadn't even come over to get all his stuff back. I never cried though, just wondered when my apartment began to feel too big without him there. And that scared me too.

I dressed slowly and carefully, I was going out with Inu today and I didn't want him to think anything was wrong, even though I am sure he could tell. I would act though, better than I have ever acted before. I'll put on my mask, my mask of happiness that was dragged out on occasions such as these (and if I am totally honest it was usually brought to work with me) and then used and discarded back into the closet. For a long while that mask was the only thing that kept me going in life, the only constant, the only thing that helped me survive the excruciating torture and madness of the world. The mask was worn out in places, old and patched where the chinks of happiness had to break and my unhappiness and depression inevitably came through. The mask that allowed me to face each and every day with a smile plastered on my face; the mask that was my undoing…when I finally let my feelings show for once. 

After I took a quick shower (my dressing slowly and carefully wasn't working out at the moment) I checked the message machine, for it was blinking annoyingly at me in a bright manner. Now, I know that it's not really possible for a machine to be bright, but for personification's sake, let it be so. 

_Hey Kagome, it's Sesshomaru._ My heart thudded. _I just wanted to ask if you could bring over my _Public Health Law: Power, Duty and Restraint _book to work for me. I forgot I needed it on a case I'm working on. I know you're going out soon but if you could drop it off before you left I would really appreciate it. See you later._ And the beep sounded. 

The ever-dreaded "see you later." Did that mean what I thought it meant? True, he wasn't going to take EVERY book he had here and if I went to the office I would potentially—stop it Kagome! This is just pathetic! Honestly, I need to just get over this. I dressed quickly and ran out the door, book in hand. 

At the office I found myself glancing at every woman I could see, to see if I could see the woman that Sesshomaru loved—like she would just pop out at me with a sign or something. I glanced around again and I couldn't help myself but I started to wonder who the woman was, if she was in the room at this moment, if she was present. I wanted to know the woman that held his heart in her hands so I could laugh at her and say that she didn't know what she had when she had it. That I had him and she was just left in the dust. I wanted to say that—but I knew it was untrue. I knew that I didn't have him. I knew that his heart was still with someone else and all that I had of him was his sexual prowess from time to time. I didn't love him either, but the thought hurt at the same time that I couldn't have him. That I couldn't be wrapped up in someone else's love. I think that if he loved me back that I could grow to love him. That perhaps I could eventually love this man. But just like Inuyasha it would never happen. Strange, though, that I seem to have these intimate relationships with these brothers. It makes it seem kind of pervy, but I didn't do it on purpose. I just…stumbled across it. Or perhaps I broke a glass bottle and then bled all over it. But then I wondered that if I loved Sesshomaru, after I have loved Inuyasha for so long—wouldn't it be like how Inuyasha loves me now? I mean, besides the sex part—wouldn't it just be like me settling for second best, or for me just loving him as a friend, as a replacement Inuyasha? Wouldn't it be like Sesshomaru was the runner-up prize? And that, sadly enough, was the bottom line. That, folks, is what I truly felt like when I was with Inuyasha, if I admitted it to myself. I was simply a "runner-up princess" in the words of my dear friend of old, Kathleen. Inuyasha didn't really want me, but he had to deal with me because I loved him. Would that be how it would be with Sesshomaru? That I would deal with his love because he loved me and I liked the emotion that it gave me to think and know that someone loved me? Would I be capable of that?

I shook off those feelings as I made it to his office that he wasn't in. I dropped off the book, suddenly wanting to be away from him, all my mixed emotions frightening me. I needed him, I wanted him, but did I feel something for him other than what I felt for…for a friend? I didn't want to run into him right now because I wasn't sure if I would squelch the urge to kiss him or shout at him or cry on his shoulder and grasp his long hair in my tiny fists so I could bring him closer to me. It was all I could do to leave his office without breaking down on his plush couch, snuggling up and then falling asleep with his comforting smell surrounding me and permeating my very being. I hated that growing up meant you couldn't give into the urges that would make you so comforted…

_9/21/02___

_3:07 a.m.___

_What does it mean that you are "grown up"? I mean, does it mean when you are twenty one, allowed to do anything legal and you are an adult in the total eyes of the law? Is it when you are finally the immortal age of eighteen and life is good and filled with cigarettes and clubbing? What does "grown up" really mean? Is it not even defined as an age anymore but as something that you can physically do? Is it a time when you can do things like dress yourself and make your own breakfast, brush your own teeth, take your own shower? Is it a time when you can pack your own suitcase when you go away or is it the mere fact that you are going away on a trip itself? What defines the term? Honestly, what can we say about the "grown up" issue? Why is it that the young strive and stamp their feet and scream "I AM GROWN UP!" and adults sit there and whisper "why am I so old?" What is really going on here? I mean, I wanted to be young forever, growing up scared me, being thirty scared me, the future scared me, death scared me. What does it mean when you don't WANT to grow up? Is there something wrong with the young person when they don't want to be older or something? Does it mean that I was stunted in my youth that I simply wanted to stay in my fairy land and never wake up in the real world? And conversely…what is the real world? What is this world that is big and bad and makes you cynical and bitter…wishing for the old times? What is this? Why when we "grow up" do we forget to believe in Santa, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny? Why do we disrespect our parents and try to rebel against society? And is it weird that you DON'T have these feelings—that you don't want to be a rebel or an illegal substance user? Are you missing out on something? Or is it just that you don't need to do those things? What type of childhood do you have to have to experience this…this…lack of desire to drink, do drugs and have group sex? I just don't understand. When do you grow up and realize that life is just a short time…that your individual life means nothing in the grand scheme of things? And do you regain the innocence you lost in your childhood and remember that the micro is all that matters?_

"My darling, you look quite hideous and thin, what have you been doing while I've been gone?" There goes my fucking happy mask.

"Hi to you too Inu," I mumbled as we embraced, half of my brain not registering that I was pulling him closer and breathing in his scent that I missed so much. I couldn't even explain it but he smelled like the wind on a summer day, something that reminded me of good times and memories, happy moments and experiences that didn't stem from depressing events. And it was true, since my mother was ill I hadn't really had the urge to eat anything and Sango hadn't come over with her recipes to cheer me up yet. I hadn't told her about my mother. For some reason I was embarrassed. Embarrassed that my mother currently didn't even know where she was half the time nonetheless what drugs she took and what weird things she did whenever I saw her. The visits with her became annoyances. She wasn't getting better and the doctors were running out of drugs that they could give her. They were running out of procedures and running up the hospital bill. I cringe to think what this would cost. 

"So, aren't you going to tell me about what you did without me? Obviously not eat, but what else did you do? And are you even going to ask how my trip was? I mean, that is something that I am just dying to tell you!" He seemed to ramble on and I gave him a dark look through the curtain of my hair. What the fuck did he think I did? My mother was…I couldn't even say it anymore. She was just…there. "Paris was just wonderful, Kagome. I bought you all these lovely clothes although I'm not sure they'll fit now since you've lost so much weight, I mean, it has just about transformed you. I mean, did you diet or something? You would just look perfect if you got a new wardrobe and if I could just get you to redo your hair I think it would compliment your weight loss…" Its amazing that the thing I have wanted to do my entire life, to lose this weight, was the thing that I least cared about at the moment. I didn't care if I frickin looked like Marilyn Monroe, I had other stuff to deal with. "Are you even listening to me? I mean, come on, dearest, what is wrong with you, you have hardly said anything! I mean, it kind of makes me feel a little neglected—"

I lost it. "Neglected? YOU feel neglected when you just spent all this time in Paris, France on your FATHER'S money and left me here to deal with MY MOTHER going clinically insane? And all you can do is sit here and talk about yourself when I don't give a shit about anything you did, I have too much to deal with! Gosh, Inu, you always do this, you always make the attention go on you and forget about anyone else's feelings! No wonder why I enjoyed being with him this whole time, he actually listened to me unlike you! And stop trying to change me into some model or something! Find someone else to dress up like your own personal Barbie! I can't stand you anymore!" I finished, raging. Once I got started I couldn't stop. And half the things I said I didn't even realize annoyed me and disturbed me until now. Why was this happening? I never had a problem with Inuyasha until now. But I was too enraged to think straight and I got up from the table we were seated at and left him, unable to stay any longer. As I huffed back to my car I almost ran over a person on the street.

"Oh…I'm so—" Holy shit…it was Hiten. And he looked gorgeous, as usual. Time hadn't changed him for the worse, his young features blossoming into a devastating boyish attractiveness that I couldn't help but admire. 

"What? Oh, watch where you're going" He muttered as he brought his eyes up to me. And for the first time I caught his eyes giving me an appreciative glance over as well and I couldn't help but notice that his scowl turned into a smile. Did he perhaps recognize me? "Well, you can run into me anytime," he whispered huskily and I shivered, but not from being aroused. I was actually a little freaked out. 

"How are you?" I smiled, though, still unable to believe that I actually ran into him—literally. He smiled back at me again and I didn't enjoy the jolt that went through my stomach at the flash of his white teeth.

"I'm just fine, especially with you here talking to me…" He eyed me again and I didn't understand what he saw that was so attractive. I was just wearing Sesshomaru's mother's dress again, I don't even know why I threw this on but I did and here I was, being leered at by someone who I thought I wanted. 

"You have no idea who I am, do you?" I asked, putting my hands on my hips. 

"I know I would have remembered someone like you, but no, I don't." I gave him one last look and remembered the dreams that I had for him. I remembered everything that I thought we could have been and I felt disgusted. I guess I was so disillusioned by him, what was I thinking? I hate men like that. I hate men who think they're the shit. What was I thinking? And with that I left him standing there with his mouth hanging open. I didn't need that. 

I crawled in bed once I got home and slept fitfully for about three hours, thinking and trying to wonder what was really going on. 

_1/16/94___

_2:43 p.m.___

_The Unwanted Wish_

_One day a depressed turtle was running as fast as he could, trying to get home before the storm. A lion came bounding past him. The turtle said, "I wish I had strong powerful legs like that lion."_

_All of a sudden the turtle had long legs like Lion. He started running home. Then rabbit when bouncing by. The turtle said, "I wish I had ears like Rabbit's." Right after he said that he got the beautiful ears Rabbit had. The turtle said, "Now I can hear just as well as I run!" _

_Then Hawk flew by. The turtle said, "I wish I had wings like Hawk." _

_Just as the two other wishes came true, the turtle got his wings just like Hawk's. The turtle started home again without a care in the world. The next morning the turtle ran out of the house to show the new him to his friends. When he saw Lion he didn't have his long legs anymore. In their place were the turtle's short and stubby legs. The turtle ran off to tell Rabbit when he saw Rabbit's ears were replaced by the turtle's simple ears. The turtle again ran away to go find Hawk. Of course when the turtle found Hawk she didn't have her wings, only the turtle's shell. The turtle ran away to try out the new him. When the turtle tried his legs, he found they were too big for his liking. When the turtle tried his new ears he heard a deafening sound that was too loud for comfort. Then when the turtle finally tried his wings he saw that when he tried to fly he only fell. The turtle went to talk to his friends about switching back. Lion said, _

_"I like my new legs because now I can be in pace with my friends."_

_Rabbit said, "I like my new ears because now I won't be woken up by a caterpillar turning over."_

_Then Hawk said, "I like my new shell because now I am closer to my friends on the ground and can hear what they are saying."_

_After the discussion the turtle ran home to think about his selfish wish._

_The moral is:_

_Be careful what you wish,_

_It may not be what you bargained for._

Be careful what you wish for. Didn't I wish for something special with Hiten? Did I wish for something special with Inuyasha? Didn't I wish to be thin and wanted? Did I wish that I could have a better life? Didn't I wish all these things? Wishes were overrated. 

However, my old feelings prevailed and I really knew that I needed to go apologize to Inuyasha and talk to him about everything. I hadn't really been all that nice and welcoming this afternoon. What was I doing? Who am I to do these things? I never used to question him. I used to just take everything in stride. What did this mean? Did this mean that I was perhaps…falling out of love…with him?

Upon arriving to the house I was let into the entry hall by some servant I never met before. Thank goodness, Jaken wasn't here. I didn't need to see HIM ever again, especially after that little escapade with the towel. Never going to live that one down.

I wandered the halls, passing the wings that Inu never visited and finding myself near Sesshomaru's side of the house. From a partially open door I heard something going on, a light coming through the crack. My curiosity got the best of me and I went to investigate. 

"Stop doing this to her, to us!" Sesshomaru's unmistakable voice sounded from the library. I stopped, curious but a little embarrassed at wanting to overhear his conversation. Was he speaking about his love?

"What am I doing to her? She is my friend! What are you talking about, you prat?" I gasped. That was…Inuyasha.

"What do I mean? You know damn well what I mean. This whole 'dragging her around like a dog on a leash' bit, that's what I mean. The whole 'selfishly leading her on because you like her attention' bit! The whole entire relationship you have with her is a lie, admit it!"

"She is my friend, goddamnit, she doesn't feel that way for me, she stopped when I told—"

"Don't act so naïve, Inuyasha. You've known even before she told you that night so many years ago and you've also known she has never given up on it. Or, if you truly have been as stupid as you claim, do me a favor and get this through your thick skull: she loves you! She hasn't stopped loving you! All she talks about is you! All she wants to be with is you! Don't you get that? She will never love anyone else or move on because of you! She won't even consider—"

"You love her, don't you?" It was as if he spoke it in a whisper but it didn't matter because I was straining my ears to catch every syllable passed between the brothers, all propriety forgotten at this moment.

"What as that got to do with—"

"Just admit that you love her. No wonder you called me from Paris to tell me about her mother. How long have you been seeing her behind my back?"

"It doesn't matter because she isn't yours to keep. It is time you gave her up, Inuyasha. Stop keeping her for your selfish needs and let her go, damn it! Let her love someone that isn't you!"

"What, and give her to you? She is in love with me, how do you expect to win her love after her loving me for so many years?"

"It's become an obsession, not a love. It can be easily broken, but you just have to let her go. Leave her alone, tell her that you can never love her like that and perhaps even add in the fact that you brought home a Frenchie who is staying in your room with you at this very moment."

"I wouldn't tell her about Paul to crush her feelings!"

And then came the really scary part, the truly scary part was at that comment, through the semi-open door, Sesshomaru brought his eyes to mine, and gave me a sudden glance of surprise that quickly melted into a small smirk on his face. He brought his eyes back to Inuyasha and delivered the final blow.

"Too bad. It looks like you just did…"

I didn't stay to see or hear Inuyasha's comment. I ran, out of the house and into the limo that they always had on call with a Chauffer just waiting in the front seat to drive someone anywhere immediately if the need arose. The Kingstons had enough money to actually pay someone to do this. Alone in the car I allowed myself to lose the barely held control I kept while running through the house. Tears streamed down my face as I choked back sobs. How, how could he be so cruel? How could he do to me what I never ever could do to Sesshomaru? How could he simply deal with my love because he selfishly enjoyed my attentions? Like some permanent self-esteem booster? How could he do that to me? And how could Sesshomaru sit there and smile when he found that I had been listening? How could he think that he had won or something?

But worst of all, was I crying because Inuyasha had somehow betrayed me or because…because seeing Sesshomaru there it felt as if I had somehow betrayed him?


	10. Just A Little Unwell

Hello everyone!  I'm back…well, ISWT is back at least.  I've had a little time adjusting to everything going on here, so yeah.  This is a long-awaited chapter, people have been bugging me mercilessly to get it out and I am sorry to have kept you waiting.  You guys are amazing, thank you for the support.  Don't forget to comment—it was particularly hard to write this chapter.  I needed a little segway of happiness before the shit really hits the fan.  Hope you like it—

Read and enjoy—

--MC

P.S. This is dedicated to Girltype, for support and guidance I never knew I needed so desperately.  Thanks for being there for me…

-----------------------------------------------------

_4/24/99___

_2:36 p.m.___

_The Creation of People_

_Over the past years there have been many unexplained events that have stumped scientists and baffled some of the greatest minds.  A long time ago, when Poseidon ruled the water world there lived beautiful creatures we call mermaids.  They lived happily in the world of water and were very content.  They only took what was provided by the gods.  The only thing that troubled the mer-people was the deep, dark cave Poseidon forbade them to ender.  There was something luring about the cave.  Maybe it was the mystery, maybe it was the darkness, but whatever it was, it drew the mer-people in and in and in._

_The cave troubled the people and they didn't know what to do.  They thought about it constantly and anything they did reminded them of the cave.  It kind of puzzled the people why Poseidon wanted this cave to exist, and if he didn't—why was it there?  Many people said there were riches inside it; maybe there were monsters; maybe there was nothing at all and Poseidon just wanted to test the people, but the more and more they thought about it, they just had to know what was in that cave._

_Amalia and Hermeculus wandered by that cave many times.  They often dared each other to go into it—but no on ever did.  To them the cave would be an adventure and they were just itching to go discover it._

_"Maybe Poseidon wants us to go in the cave," thought Amalia._

_"Then why would he tell us not to?" Hemeculus asked tentatively._

_"I don't know!" Amalia whined," but why would Poseidon out something like that out in the open if it was really dangerous?  I mean, he does care for us like his children."_

_"That is true, but how could we know for sure?"  Amalia pondered the question for a while and then burst out—_

_"I can't stand it any longer!  The suspense is killing me!"_

_"Isn't someone a swimming drama act?"  Hermeculus answered mockingly._

_"Well…?"  Amalia answered shrewdly._

_"Well what?"_

_"Are we going to go in?" she said._

_"Of course my dear, ladies first!" Hemeculus said with a smirk._

_"Oh thank you scardey cat!"_

_"Your welcome." As the two entered the cave they felt a cold, chilling feeling run up and down their spine._

_"What was that?"  Amalia asked._

_"I don't know—I don't know everything, okay?"_

_Everything became clear to the pair as they swam through the cave.  Questions shot through their heads as they traveled deeper and deeper, they asked things such as: Why do we live in the water?  Why can't we live somewhere else?  Why do we always have to obey Poseidon?  Why do we have flippers?_

_Then all of a sudden it hit them—their lungs tightened, their flippers disappeared and in place of them where two things that didn't swim very well at all.  They floated to the surface of the water and washed up on the beach.  There they saw every other  mer-person and they knew what they had done.  They had discovered the element for true evil.  They found something worse than a thousand monsters.  They found reality and it smacked them in the face like the smell of rotting salmon.  Poseidon took away their perfect world and changed it into a world full of hatred and hard times.  Nothing would be like their precious sea again.  Nothing would ever be the same again.  Nothing._

_---------------------------_

I had gotten to such extreme pathetic measures that I was even growling and yelling at my own cat because he looked at me wrong.  I just sat on the bed and he gave me that look, like he knew I was doing something I shouldn't, like he knew that I was probably being incredibly stupid and childish and how would he know anyway?

"This is my bed, buster," I threatened through clenched teeth.  He looked at me, one ear twitched and then he resumed to cleaning himself.  "Butt-licker," I muttered darkly, catching the almost miniscule snort my cat made at the comment.  Damn feline hearing.  The just don't let you get away with anything these days.  

Well, it wasn't necessarily that I was feeling in a particular dark or creepy or pathetic mood—no matter what had been going on around me lately.  I was trying to be optimistic about everything no matter if I had absolutely nothing to be optimistic, unless you count gaining two pounds in about an hour (honestly, I am THAT talented) while I shoveled in Sango's cookies that she had dropped by earlier before going to "work" or whatever it is she does these days, promising to return.  She would be here anytime and I wanted to show her a proud and happy face in light of everything that happened so I could prove to her that I was really a strong person after all.  Well, I think I'm a strong person—it is my heart that I have to worry about sometimes.  Blasted organ.  I jumped when my cat spread out and sunk his claws into the back of my sweatshirt at that moment, annoying me and pissing me off to no end.  You think they are the cutest thing when you see them at the pet store and then they grow into these grotesque, annoying animals that want to prove to you that you really are as pathetic as you think you are.  Dear god, I'm analyzing my cat for ulterior motives.  I think I should just find my Colt .45 (well, if I owned a gun I suppose that is what I would own and I so know what kind of gun it is and I am not just referencing it from another book because I want to _sound like I know what I'm talking about) and put myself and everyone else out of misery.   Am such a burden that even my cat—_

He scratched me again.  Right.  He still needs me for food.  OKAY! Sango needs to get here before I actually start talking out loud to my cat and then I collect more cats and instantly age forty years to become some neurotic cat woman spinster that has no friends and Sango will just think she went into the wrong apartment when she arrives with her key.  AAAARGH! I can't do this to myself!  He doesn't love me! He doesn't love me! He doesn't love me! He doesn't love me! He doesn't love me!  Who the hell am I talking about anyways?  Did I mean Inuyasha…or Sesshomaru?  Its not that they are similar, but who am I really more broken up about?  I'm not even sure anymore.  I want to be sure, but I'm not.  I should be thinking about Sesshomaru because even though he was being particularly snotty that day Inuyasha still came out the bigger dick.  Paul!  French!  Paris!  AAAAAARGH!  I am tired.  I'm going to sleep.

Damn it! Sango's here.  Bloody hell.  There goes my composed stature.  Sango gracefully (the bitch)… (Alright, I really don't mean it) glided into my apartment and stared a little dumbly at the piles of books stacked against the doors.  My insides twisted nastily when I thought of  how those books actually got there and any kind of previous composure that I had (admittedly it was slim to none), left my aching body and flew out the window.  I turned around and clutched my cat to me (he gave me a look of "I knew you really needed me, you stupid woman") and whimpered into his fur.  Sango patted my back reassuringly and kissed my forehead.  

"Sweetie, you can't sit her and mope all the time," she whispered against my temple, her motherly instincts kicking into overdrive and I didn't mind even though that thought made my heart cringe uncontrollably while still imbedded in my chest—not a pleasant feeling.  I muffled something against my cat's fur.  "What?"  She soothed.

"I have a license to mope, especially when there is nothing in this world to live for, Sango," I said dramatically, not altogether agreeing with the statement, but knowing it would earn me more sympathy.  

"Oh darling, I know just what you need," she crooned before she did something most despicable.  She dragged me into the bathroom and began to take off my clothes.

"EXCUSE ME!" I yelled, wondering what exactly she was doing and how getting me clean in any fashion was going to make the mope-y one feel better.  When I was simply clad in my bra and panties, something no one has seen in a while (aforementioned reasons, Sesshomaru hadn't been over, although he had called, twice, asking me how I was feeling and about my mother which I ignored because it hurt to hear his voice over the phone and not in front of me, kissing me, taunting me with thoughts of that night when nothing else could ever be the same again).  

"What the hell is wrong with you, Kagome?  What have you been doing to yourself?"  Sango's eyes were studying my body in close detail and I winced when I glanced down, not seeing mounds of flesh as I had expected.  I clutched my stomach as I looked at the unhealthy state my body had depreciated into, unable to understand how I had let myself get so…disgusting.  My mother was in the hospital—not eating, accomplishing her goal of loosing weight through her disease and here I was, unconsciously starving myself to the point where I wanted to be fat again just so I could recognize myself in the slightest.  I stood up and touched my face in the mirror—bags under my eyes, large circles of red and black, tingeing my already pale complexion impossibly paler.  I looked absolutely disgusting; there was no other word for it.  I turned to Sango as she stood behind me, her hand pressed to her mouth in utter shock and compassion.  

"Sango, who am I any more?"  I whispered, suddenly feeling very sorry that she had to have a friend like me—someone who could barely take care of herself and not even realize when she was killing herself slowly and painfully.  Perhaps the pain of my emotions, my mixed emotions, confused me and distracted me from the pain of everything else.  Sango hugged me tightly and brushed back my hair.

"You are Kagome, my best friend in the world, and the most confused and introspective woman to have ever lived," she gently whispered, her honest words allowing me a brief smile despite the seriousness of the situation.

"That was a rhetorical question," I murmured back, holding her closer to me.  Sango chuckled lightly.

"I know, sweetie," she answered and let go of me softly to start a bath.  

Ten minutes later I was settled into the comforting aroma of pear berry, eyes closed, basking in companionable silence with Kagome perched on the counter.  I let the air around me soothe me into a delicate slumber of relaxation.  

_11/23/02___

_1:47 p.m.___

_I told a friend once that if you are ever depressed you need to find one thing in the world that you can think of that makes you inexplicably happy.  _

_He chuckled dryly and said he couldn't recall anything.  _

_I told him; for me, it isn't necessarily a thing that I do, like playing water polo or riding my bike.  It is the feeling I get when I am doing these things when I find that moment of complete happiness where no one can do wrong and all is right for the world.  It could be a second, a minute, maybe even an hour but it is something that when you look back on you can't help but smile.  Perhaps it was during a sleepover at a friend's house but you never went to sleep or perhaps it was during a drive-in movie that you found particularly entertaining, perhaps it is on a special rock you like to sit on with a friend or perhaps through a song that speaks to your soul.  This moment and this feeling is something no one else can experience or take away from you.  It is something that is specifically yours, special and individual like you yourself. _

_He only chuckled again and hugged me close and said, "I think I just found one of my moments…"_

Sango chuckled a little and then whispered, "Polygamy is not a lion trait."  I laughed, outright and loud, recalling the moment…

_We were sitting in some nondescript Chinese restaurant with Kouga, and I felt a little awkward, eating dinner while the two exchanged pleasantries with me—only to turn and gaze lovingly at each other.  It made me feel alone and tired all at once, not fully understanding that I was completely and utterly jealous of what she had; a relationship with someone that felt the same way about her as she felt for him.  It felt like I had been abandoned—everyone had someone—even Miroku was off with some girl and Inuyasha was with his usual and typical Tom, Dick and Harry.  The fact of the matter was, is that everyone else seemed to have someone except me.  But I guess that was just as my fault as anyone else's, since I wouldn't let anyone to replace Inuyasha or get close enough to even try.  I was cold and afraid, that was the bottom line, and I hated admitting it to myself.  So I was stubborn.  Stupid Kouga was ranting about something and I decided to jump in the conversation.  We were speaking of love and marriage—god knows how we got on that subject— (insert roll of eyes) and how men don't seem to be monogamous like women are.  I certainly believed it, definitely.  _

_"Men are definitely animals," I flashed a quick smile at Sango.  Kouga glanced at me briefly.  _

_"Yes, so why are we tied down to one woman?  Why can't we be like a lion, having a pride of women…" he chuckled, knowing how to get on Sango's nerves.  However, it was not Sango who raised her voice then.  It was me._

_"Polygamy is not a lion trait!"  I yelled, cringing on the inside at my totally incorrect statement.  The restaurant goers glared at me, unable to truly understand what we were discussing and the magnitude of the argument.  It wasn't large, but it struck a nerve in me, it physically hurt the romantic side of me to think of men having multiple wives—allowing their attentions and love (if it was even present) to be spread among so many people.  I always thought it was to be shared, nurtured, kept between two people and two people alone.  Even though Sango laughed delicately I knew that the only thing I could do was laugh gently as well, reducing the tension of the atmosphere to nothing.  But I could help thinking…_

I laughed dryly as she scratched her chin.  

"Sometimes I hate being the lead character in my own book of life.  Sometimes I wish I was a periphery character just on the outside watching this whole crazy madness.  How does it feel, Sango, to be a periphery character?"  Sango shifted a little on the counter and then looked me straight in the eyes.  

"It feels wonderful," she admitted.  "But don't think about me, Kagome, I was meant to take a backseat.  Your lead character material."  I ran my hair through my hair swiftly.

"But don't you notice that a lot of these lead characters are kind of one dimensional?"  Sango's mouth quirked a bit.

"Yeah, I do.  But you can change that, Kag, your life isn't set in stone, the ink isn't dry yet.  Rewrite your story if you need to; make your character to your liking.  And secure a decent leading man who isn't one dimensional either."  I laughed truly this time; it was always like Sango to be trying to get me a husband at a time like this.  

I settled back into the bath as Sango got up to cook some food or clean the apartment or do something useful with herself, knowing her.  She always has to be my mother, although I didn't mind in this state.  I needed more mothering at the moment than I ever did.  I wanted to be held and told what to do so I didn't have to think anymore, I didn't have to take responsibility.  Especially after the other night.  I didn't really know what to think anymore about that.  I didn't want to.  But as I sat there in the tub, remembering times when Sesshomaru was there with me, I couldn't help thinking about it.  

_"You love her, don't you?"_

I shifted in the tub.

_"Just admit that you love her."_

Does he really love me?  Was it there, hitting me in the face and I didn't notice?  Was it in every caress, kiss, hug, laugh just like in all those romance movies I thought I knew so well?  Was he looking at me longingly as I stared off into the sunset—dreaming of Inu?  Did he really love me instead of using me like I thought I was using him?  Was I really using him for comfort or had it become more?  My legs shifted up to allow me to lean my chin on my knees, the usual roll of fat between my curled up body not hindering me as before.  How long had I been destroying myself without my notice?  My eyes widened with shock and horror to think that Sesshomaru perhaps had seen me in my downward cycle.  Correction, he HAD seen me.  Why hadn't he said anything?  

_"Kagome, aren't you hungry?"  Sesshomaru asked me, watching me play with my food—pushing it back and forth across my plate._

_"No, not particularly."  He looked up and gave me a half smile, a smile that held hurt and concern.  _

_"Kagome, did you know that I think you're beautiful?"  He said, catching me off guard with the comment.  I looked into his eyes and smiled slightly, unable to believe him and yet thankful for his attention.  _

_"You know it's not necessary to say that," I whispered, speaking to my food.  _

_"I know.  But as a lawyer, I pride myself in speaking the truth."  We both laughed, assuaging the tension from the dinner._

When I remembered all these moments, these memories of us together, it isn't hard to believe that our "arrangement" had definitely crossed over to the line of relationship.  And yet, with all my recalling and remembering, I don't know the exact moment this happened—if there even was an exact moment.  Was there a moment for him?  Or was it just always a relationship to him—and I unwittingly pushed him away? Again, did I love him?

_1/3/04___

_4:56 a.m.___

_Love.  It's the strongest and most powerful emotion a person can possess.  That is the understatement of the century.  Love kills people.  It's like a bad advertisement for the modern-remake-Baz Lurhman Romeo and Juliet; Guns don't kill people, love does.  However, when one looks passed all the shit, wade through the bull and get to the heart of the matter, love is as complex as human beings are.  One can go through a whole lifetime without feeling all the forms that love has to offer the human psyche; it differs from the pleasure of friendship, the fidelity of family and the complexities of romance, just to name a few of the realms love touches with its platinum plated touch.  But romantic love, true love is what puzzles me the most.  There are so many definitions that one could even go as far as to wonder how people even agree with each other on how they are feeling.  Other countries have different words to express the many forms of love and yet English is lacking in a set of concrete answers for what love truly is and what it entails.  _

_I, myself, being a grade A failure in the ways and matters of all things dealing with the tricky emotion (I must profess that I have never felt true love because I have never had a partner to feel the same way) cannot truly give a respectable answer to what this love is.  However, from my extensive reading and hopeless romantic, whirlwind clichéd tendencies, I believe I am as qualified as anyone else is in the matter.  To me, true love is emotion without want.  That is to say that yes, of course, in an ideal world you want the person to love you back and feel the same etc etc etc, but what I mean is that you are completely satisfied being near them, listening to their voice, laughing with them.  That when you are together there are no demands or pressures, no expectations or preconceptions, you are just happy with the opportunity of being near them.  Love is not all consuming, even though I have previously stated that I desire this, I do not think so now.  Love is also being aware of those around you and not forgetting the people who have mattered all your life (namely your family and friends) in the daze of an extremely intense and passionate affair.  Love is not blind to one's faults; instead love embraces these faults and as the great Kathleen once said "does not love you in spite of your flaws, but because of them."  True love is a never-ending, continual battle to fight for your loved one in this ever-changing world in which we live in._

After being with Sess, my idea of love had definitely changed.  With him, it wasn't all-consuming nor freakishly boring.  With him, it was like normal routine, life as usual, with the added bonus of the comfort and attention of someone you enjoyed having around.  It didn't hurt—gut and heart wrenchingly when he wasn't there; I felt like I could be my own person without him being my other half.  It was as if we were a well-oiled machine, working together to achieve the same goal and yet not changing our parts or our original destinations for each other.  I liked that, the stability, the comfort, the knowledge that he was always a phone call away when he wasn't around and when he was around he wasn't continually alerting me to his presence—there were times when we just sat and read, focused on work or whatnot; not ignoring each other, but in companionable silence.  He was like a friend, someone who I could be myself with and yet I felt sexual desire for him and him for me, something that was ever-present in our relationship.  I liked that too; being driven to exquisite release in the knowledge that I WAS wanted and I WAS lusted.  And it didn't hurt that I found him so arousing physically either.  He knew what buttons to press without even touching me, a feat in and of itself.  It surprised me how well we were together and yet it didn't feel like the love that I always wanted, it didn't feel like the love I had for Inuyasha.  It didn't feel like pain and heartache and stabbing torture.  Was that because he was reciprocating my attentions, or was it because my ideas and desires in love had changed dramatically; a tortured heart didn't define love for me anymore?  

But as Sango yelled at me that I had to get out before I shriveled up in the tub, I couldn't help thinking; it still didn't mean that I didn't love Inu anymore…

"The Uno gods hate me!  Why do I have to be the bastard child!  I feel neglected," I whined, pouting at Sango as she won the umpteenth game of Uno we played.  After I presented myself to her—clothed once again, we ate some sandwiches she fixed in the kitchen.  As I cleaned up the dishes, Sango pulled out the Uno deck and smiled devilishly at me.  Okay, now, I definitely will admit that competition fires me up to no end—I love playing games I know I can win.  However, there was one game that eluded me—Uno—and Sango knew it.  Perhaps I thought about it too much, perhaps I didn't really pay attention, but the fact of the matter was that I absolutely sucked at the game.  Completely and utterly sucked, hands down I was probably the worst Uno player in the world—next to Sango, which burned the hatred in me more that she would always beat me.  It bothered me even more that she didn't even TRY to win, she didn't care, and I was sitting here thinking up strategies to beat her.  How can you strategize against someone who has no strategy?  It's difficult to say the least.  In a flurry of hatred and passion I tossed the cards everywhere, too upset the care about the mess.  Sango's eyes glanced around the room, the cards strewn every which way, laughter dancing in her eyes.  I looked up at her, not amused.

"Honey, honey, what's this? Why do you do that?" She asked, finger waggling at the mess, trying not to laugh.

"I don't know, last time I still found Uno cards months afterwards.  I swear there are some still stuck behind some cabinet or something. Perhaps that's why I loose.  Damn cards," I grumbled good-naturedly.  

"Kag, you have serious issues.  But, nonetheless, good times had by all."  I pushed Sango a bit in a friendly fight.

"Who are you?"  I laughed hysterically, Sango shoving me back equally hard despite the pregnancy.  I swear the woman gets stronger when she has a child in her.  "Crazy lady."  We laughed again, as she pushed me a little too hard and I landed on my rump on the floor.  "Why why why?  Why is the world against me?"  I yelled heavenward, earning a groan from Sango.  "What's wrong with you?"

"I'm having issues with god again," she answered huffily.  Sango was a Catholic and yet she still had her struggles, especially with the teachings and controversies surrounding the religion.  "I don't feel like being a sheep to the church," she huffed once more and I smiled, a true smile for once, knowing that her crisis of faith was averted but her issues with the church were all but over.  

"Yeah, sure, whatever dear," I muttered and I rolled my eyes for effect, knowing it would goad her into an argument.  Sango just laughed again, getting up to help me off the floor.  

"I think its time for some Victorian romance comedy therapy," she smiled and I couldn't help but clap my hands together in joy.  That means—

"EMMA!"  

I shifted the popcorn on my knee as we both quoted the movie [I saw her at church and she seemed—vulgar, crass, base…]—verbatim—by heart.  

"God bless Jane Austen," I yelled, earning another disapproving I'm-still-questioning-god face from Sango.  "And while we're at it, god bless Mr. Knightly."  

"Now that is something I can agree with," Sango sighed dreamily, stuffing popcorn in her mouth followed by a spoonful of peanut butter.  Blasted pregnant women…

As we continued to watch the movie [It should not be improper for us to dance, we are not brother and sister…Brother and sister! Indeed, we are not], my heart warmed for the woman sitting beside me.  Even though I had known her for many years—we had been through our share of love, loss and beyond together—I still loved her dearly.  Sango was someone who I could take anywhere, fit in with any crowd; every type of my friends adored her honest and innocent nature quirked with good-natured craziness.  And yet I couldn't help but be jealous of her yet again, her life not tainted with the pain or sadness or complexities of my own—her life as a periphery character.  At least she understood my pain—she has experienced loss of her own but it just seemed as if some people (namely myself) had all the unfortunate luck to be stuck with the life-changing events that shape and contour our own character. I looked over at Sango again. [Perhaps it is our imperfections that make us so perfect for one another] Life is crazy like that; I couldn't help thinking as I turned my attention back to the movie, happy, that for once, even though my problems were hardly solved, I wasn't the one left alone.

Sango left my apartment late that night, with a hug and some more cookies [You need them!]  I turned and went to go about the tedious task of cleaning up after our little girl party, even though it was true Sango hadn't left much for me to do.  As I picked up one of the last Uno cards (I know I'm still going to find some later), my eyes rested on the pile of books once again placed neatly in the hall leading to my bedroom.  I knew at that moment that I wanted to see him again, that it definitely wasn't over, but I still had more thinking to do.  I definitely had more thinking to do.  At it didn't even involve Sesshomaru.  It involved Inuyasha.

_"What, and give her to you? She is in love with me, how do you expect to win her love after her loving me for so many years?"_

He was right.  How could Sesshomaru even stand a hair's breadth of a chance against Inuyasha, the man that I fell for hard—literally and figuratively?  But as tears sprang to my eyes, recalling other words spoken that night, my heart ached in that wrenching way again.  Hadn't I decided that I didn't define love this way anymore?  Hadn't I decided that love didn't mean you had to be consumed?  _No! _My heart screamed, begging me not to deny the long-felt feelings that had treaded the annals of my heart for so many years.  _Inuyasha is the only one for you!  _Don't just forget him! _ I clutched my shirt, dragging my nails hard across the skin of my chest above my heart as I sunk to the floor.  The idea of forgetting Inu left me for the time being as I curled, broken on the floor.  If I was completely honest with myself, loving Inu was safe.  Being with Inu was safe.  It involved no risk, no hurt because there was nothing to be hurt or risk for.  But deep down inside perhaps my heart beat a little quicker, another voice clamoring to be heard above the din—_why does being safe feel like its killing you inside?  __


	11. Control

_3/12/05___

_9:20 p.m.___

_I grew up with having laughter in my house every single day.  Yes, we do have our rows, but laughter always follows.  Every dinner cannot pass without it, every hour does not dare to dream to be left out, and every day ends with a smile.  I think a lot of the credit goes to my mother.  She truly is the original party girl, bringing light and love into our home.  Without my mother, our life would be a void, and we had to experience that void…_

_---------------------------------_

She walked slow and deliberate, as if she had to make every step count, heel to toe, heel to toe.  She was hidden inside her mind, her body there but my mother wasn't.  It was a shell, an empty shell.  

After the day Sango came over, my time was spent with constant visits with my mother, constant moments where she hurt me irrevocably—constant moments where I couldn't stop my heart from pounding because I was so scared, so scared to be around her.  Somehow she had just forgot how to live, and left us to take care of her. And I did. She became my doll. Every day I dressed her, fed her, showered her and brushed her teeth.   


The visits with her became annoyances. I couldn't understand why I had to take care of the woman who needed to help me from one of the darkest moments of my life. Where was she now that I needed to help her with my problems with Inuyasha and Sesshomaru?  I couldn't even take comfort in Sesshomaru anymore.  Inuyasha was a joke.  Sango had her family. I was drowning and there was no one there to save me.

It wasn't even that she was there and that I couldn't be with her.  It was that she was right in front of me, torturing me, _looking_ like my mother and in reality being nothing alike.  She looked, talked, smelled like my mother and I couldn't handle that…_imposter_ pretending to be my mother.  Sure, I knew, I knew she was her, that the logistics of the disease made her such—I knew it.  But it didn't make it any easier.  She was my mother for goodness sakes!  I was going crazy because I didn't know how to handle Inuyasha or Sesshomaru and I wanted her comfort and guidance.  It made it harder than anything had to be with her sitting there, rocking back and forth, not eating anything and not being herself.  The doctors told us she would get antsy before we came; she had to take more drugs before we could see her.  And she hated her shower.  Martin and I had to force her to do anything.  

I don't even know how you would describe the feeling that I had whenever I looked at her.  I mean, it was so scary it was funny sometimes.  The things she did, you could tell she wasn't all there.  You could tell that this woman had problems.  And yet whenever I saw her, saw that shell, I associated her with my mother.  Soon, her hugs, kisses and smiles were replaced with her vacant eyes, wrinkled body from lack of nutrients and deranged activities.  I began to not remember a time when she wasn't ill.  It was like there was separation—my old mother died and had become this new mother—a woman who wanted to take off her pants in the hallway of the hospital.  The worst of it all was that my mother was a brilliant woman.  She had always been flighty but she always had something interesting to say about science, flowers or art.  And now she was here and she could barely remember her home address, if that at all. 

Martin and I took her out on her regular walks.  The sun had come out for it was mid afternoon. The cherry blossoms on the trees were shedding and the petals were swirling around the air. I felt like I was in a proverbial fairyland, pink petals decorated my hair and the air had a sweet scent to it. Martin and I were walking around the hospital grounds with my mother for our usual afternoon walk. I walked hand in hand with my mother because we wouldn't know what she would do if one of us weren't there to guide her. 

"So, do you remember where you live?"  Martin asked.  The doctor had said it was good to remind her of things of her life.  I had been all for it, I wanted my mother back and anything was worth a try.  

"Come on mom, your house?"  She looked at me and then glanced down at her feet.  She was walking in that particular way again, so concentrated, like she couldn't do anything because walking was too hard for her.  

"My house?"  She said, looking at Martin again and then me.  I nodded and she stared back, her eyes glassy from some unknown reason, haunting when she looked at me.  It is said one could see your soul through your eyes and looking at my mother's eyes, it felt like I couldn't see anything that could even resemble a soul.  It was like she was just gone.  And I couldn't bear it.  "Yes, my house.  Vines…" she said while motioning with her hands up and down as if to mimic the vines.  Martin patted her hand and smiled, nodding.  

"What about your garden?  Remember the garden you have?"  I smiled, remembering my mother tending the garden she had made with my father.  He was blessed with a green thumb, something that brought me endless joy in childhood.  Whenever we walked or hiked somewhere he would point out the types and kinds of flowers and bushes, quizzing my mother and me.  After he died my mother continued to slave over the garden—a tribute to their love.  The garden mimicked her, as time wore on it began to thrive exponentially—blossoming with beauty and healing.  The garden was a source of joy for me, something that was uniquely my mother and father's, something I could sit in and behold the beauty that is love.  With the garden, it was if my father was just around the corner, pulling out weeds and watering the bushes.  In my childhood, even though I knew he was gone, I would look for him sometimes—convinced he was just around the next corner, the next bush.  

"Flowers…my husband…" she began to rock back and forth on her heels, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.  She gripped my hand tightly and I turned to Martin.

"I think its time we brought her in."  Martin nodded, afraid of what memories he had brought back with his innocent mentioning.  Turning to new topics, he once more smiled at me.

"It's your daughter's birthday coming up," he said, and I giggled like a little kid again, hoping to her something, at least a birthday wish from my mother.  The doctors had expected she would be able to be out by then; the progress in her treatments had vastly improved.  With her back I could deal with anything—Sesshomaru and Inuyasha would be taken care of in a heartbeat, if I could have her by my side.  Then our family could be normal—together again. It was my greatest birthday wish.  However, life wasn't kind.  She stopped walking entirely and let go of my hand. With a puzzled look at me, she murmured,

"What daughter?" Her cold, steely blue eyes bored into my heart. I stopped, unable to breath. The flower petals stuck in my hair became limp and lifeless just as I felt. My mother didn't know who I was.  She didn't know her own daughter anymore.  The daydream of my family being normal was ripped from my mind. Instead I took the picture at face value: we were walking around the grounds of the hospital and stupid flowers that would be stuck in my hair for hours afterwards smashed under my feet. I wanted to go home. And soon enough, I did. 

_No passion_

It hurt.  I could see myself in my mind's eye, pounding on the box surrounding me, holding me in, trapping me.  

_No expression_

I sunk to the floor, biting my lip hard enough to draw blood.  Tears, mixing, bleeding, denying.  Tears became the currency of the night, paying its dues to the blood.  

_Last place_

It felt so freeing, if this was how life felt, I would never be doing this.  It was addicting. I just wanted to feel again.

_First race_

Is it real?  This, this life?  This knife?  What was real anymore?  If I died in my mind, would it matter?  

_Can't get out_

Deeper, deeper.  Crimson, surrounding me, it felt so freeing.

_Can't get out!_

I hate her.  I hate him.  

_Die in peace_

If I could just hang on a bit longer, if I could just, if I could just push a little farther.  I'll get to that place.

_Live in hell_

It was just like I remembered it, all those years ago.  The exquisite piercing, the knowledge that just more, more, one more—that if I bleed enough it would all just go away.

_Love forever_

Ripping, tearing, existing.  Pain was my only love.  My only oxygen.

_Never dwell_

She doesn't know if I'm alive anyway.  

_Be yourself_

What am I?

_On the way home_

I'm ascending…

I couldn't look at myself in the mirror.  But it could also be the blood smeared over my reflection jarring my view.  It wasn't enough, I realized, to ease my suffering.  Blood, that is.  Pain.  Intensity.  Life.  It wasn't enough.  I kept on thinking selfishly, wondering if Inu would come and find me—would he be sad?  Would Sesshomaru find me, would he ever come back?  Does anyone even care?  What is real?

Throbbing, I could see the tiny red lines covering my body.  I hadn't been picky where I cut, where I bled.  I could feel the sharp stabbing lines dig into my flesh, searing my body where I had felt I deserved to hurt, deserved to die, deserved to burn, perish.  It was pretty, almost.  The designs I made on my skin were representations of past hurts, past crimes.  I sat in my bathroom, staring at my wrists, thighs, arms, stomach in a sense of bewilderment.  I had done this.  I had control over something in my life.  I no longer had to worry about Sesshomaru and Inuyasha, it didn't matter.  My mother didn't matter.  She wasn't important. I finally had a grasp of the situation.  I was in control.  

I laughed, cruelly, as blood trickled down from my lip.  Instead of the tinkling laughter I was used to, I heard harsh coughs, chokes—disgusting noises erupted from my throat.  I had won, right?  I had my prize—my trophy was my body, carving monuments dedicated to my pain on the surface of my skin.  The exquisite agony when I brought the knife across my skin, tearing, splitting the flesh.  The red line was worth it, worth the torture and white hot clarity.  I was already bleeding figuratively, it fits that I bled literally as well.

_Anguish_

  
_Salvation is the price you pay_

_To bleed a quart of blood away_

_Down the drain the blood, it flows_

_Only I know where it goes_

_White hot sensations as I slice_

_Burning scars are a worthy price_

_See the pretty designs I achieve_

_When I practice to deceive_

_Bandaids__ cover my blood stained hands_

_I am the queen of the nowhere lands_

_Knives adorn my weighty crown_

_Do you know I like the sick spiral I'm down?_

_Slicing, dicing, mincing pies_

_I see the only bloodstained eyes_

_They watch me as I lose my grip_

_I never go anywhere without my knife at my hip_

_Showers wash away the soil_

_Of a thousand soldier's toil_

_But where is my salvation when I die?_

_Each night, each day, in each bed I lie_

_Panting, crying, I lie in bed_

_Going over my thoughts in my head_

_Withholding information is what I do best_

_No one will ever know my inside jest_

_Would anyone even feel a betrayal_

_At my knife's well-beaten trail?_

_Could anyone guess my eternal pain_

_Or are they too worried about their own personal gain?_

_Screaming never relieves the stress_

_Of a thousand night's duress_

_When my pain finally reaches the crest_

_Only then shall l finally find rest_

_Then I wait until another day_

_When I need to bleed my troubles away_

_I won't ask for help, I have too much pride_

_This is my own personal suicide_

I heard knocking on my door as I was slowly passing out.  I couldn't really move, but the person either had a key or knew where my spare was because I heard the door unlocking before I could even move.  Half of me hoped it was Inuyasha or Sesshomaru—my selfish side hoping they could see me in this disgusting state—see what I could do when I had control.  There were long moments when I made no noise as the intruder glanced over my apartment for any sign of life.  They should have guessed that there wasn't any—I was half alive on the bathroom floor.  I wondered idly how much blood one needed to loose before they died.  My blood was flowing sluggishly now and as I glanced over my body I hoped it would scar.  Maybe it would help me remember how much control I could have.  

"Oh my god…"  It was Miroku.  I didn't know why he was there, but there he was, standing outside of my bathroom door, looking at me in utter horror.  I smiled at him slowly.

"Hey there," I said slowly, my throat not working from all the crying and sobbing I did while blocking out the pain of my mother's denial.  

"What the fuck have you done?"  He was leaning over me now, taking the knife from my hand and placing it on the counter.   I was too far gone to even protest.  As he started to run the water of the bath and strip off my clothes (what was left of them), he gasped at me.  And my mind began to clear.  My body throbbed with clarity as I suddenly felt disgusting.  "Kagome, what have you done?"  He gasped again, a tear trickling down his face and burning my lip as it hit my face.  He lifted my body—replete from starvation and blood loss—into the bath.  The water hurt.  I gasped as I tried to hold onto the side of the bathtub, blood still oozing out of my arms.  I could barely keep my head above the water.  With a worried glance at me, Miroku took off his clothes and clad in his boxers, got into the bath with me—leaning my back against his chest.  "Shhh, shhh…it's going to be alright," he whispered as I started to softly cry into his arms.  He petted my wet hair, pulling it away from my eyes and tucking it behind my ear.  "Shhh, Kagome…"  he whispered and gathered me closer, pressing his head into my hair. 

"Am I going to die, Miroku?"  I scratched out as I turned around to face him in the tub.  He worked at a hospital, although I was never really clear on what he actually did there.  But since I felt like I was spiraling towards oblivion I thought he was the best (and only) person to ask at the moment.

"No, you aren't going to die.  These are mainly superficial cuts.  But I'll need to bandage them later."  He kissed the top of my head and hugged me closer, careful to avoid open wounds and anything else that would be deemed inappropriate.  The hot water slowed down my bleeding for a bit, even though I didn't understand why Miroku didn't mind that he was sitting in a bathtub mixed with my blood, practically.  Relaxing into his arms I almost drifted off to sleep, but he shook me awake.  "Don't sleep, not yet, alright Kagome?"  I nodded half-heartedly and wondered what I was doing.  I wondered what had set me off—if my mother was just the straw that broke the camel's back.  Everything had been so confusing lately—nothing seemed right or normal anymore.  When had it all become so complicated?

Finally I left the bath, feeling replete and confused.  

_Sidelined_

_Confused, stranded, life is a jest_

_Hardly concrete—_

_Bittersweet_

_Consciousness fading_

_My life is replete_

_Hands over time_

_With any clime_

_Maybe it's fatal_

_Not meant to be heard_

_Maybe it's dependent_

_On every which word_

_Does it really matter,_

_When you get to the end?_

_Or must we succumb_

_To a perpetual "around the bend?"_

_Clearly it's confusing_

_In every which way_

_For nothing really seems_

_To hold much sway_

_Should I fight 'til my death_

_Or give up and move on?_

_It all seems to me_

_Like one big con_

_I think it's really funny_

_How were not really there_

_We're not living in the real world_

_Because the real world is fair_

Miroku bandaged me and put me to bed.  I didn't really want to think about anything anymore, I just wanted to rest—leave me to my dreams, to my rest.  It all felt unreal, unbelievable and yet when I looked down at myself, bandaged and skinny, I could see that I have capable of something like this for as long as I learned to think for myself.  Had my whole life been waiting for this one moment—this one exact moment where I tasted sweet surrender?  The thought that scared me most was how easily I did it.  How easily I was able to cut myself, detach myself from the pain and hurt and just cut.  How easy it was to just watch the blood red lines form upon my skin, like road maps to the emotional cuts upon my damaged and bloodied soul.  Even though my wounds would heal, even though I would be able to touch my skin without it hurting, what scared me most was that I might never be able to stop the control, the freeing feeling.  Sesshomaru told me his revolution was sex and at the time I thought mine was Inuyasha.  And yet, what if what gave me the feeling of being free meant so much that you were caged, broken, buried?  What if in order to be free, I had to kill my ties to life?  

I sobbed silently as Miroku climbed into bed with me, holding me close under the covers.  He didn't ask why, he didn't force me to talk; he was just there for me.  Burying my head in his neck, I couldn't think of any other place I wanted to be.  Maybe this whole Inuyasha/Sesshomaru thing was simpler than I had imagined.  Maybe the answer was with me the whole time.  Kissing Miroku's shoulder I feel asleep, as he continued to run his fingers through my wet and tangled hair.  It was a comforting feeling that I had only felt recently—with Sesshomaru.  I enjoyed that feeling.  My mind made up I snuggled further into the warmth that Miroku gave.  My last realization, although, haunted my dreams.  It took me all that to finally realize something—it wasn't death I was afraid of—it was life.

* * *

Hey ya'll, wow…this was a really hard chapter to write.  I don't know about it at all.  But I'm posting it because it's a part of the story—no matter what.  I know its short, but this needed to be its own chapter, definitely.  Giving credit where credit is due, though—these two songs helped me get into the mood to write everything here.  The poems and everything were inspired by this chapter and they are disgustingly realistic and fit into the chapter really well.  Mad props to these inspiring songs—

Is it Real?

--Cowboy Bebop
    
    Figurines that fall like leaves the disappear, keep calling
    
    Is it real?  Is it real?
    
    Dark machines that wheeze and breathe then mock the air, appalling
    
    What is real?  What is real?
    
    This world can really be too much
    
    I can't take another day
    
    I guess that I've just had enough
    
    My minds slipping far away
    
    I'm falling out of touch
    
    Could someone please explain?
    
    Set my mind for open sky, but couldn't fly, so sadly
    
    What am I?  What am I?
    
    Sullen eyes shed teardrop lies then criticize, now laughing
    
    What is real?  What is real?
    
    It's really all become too much
    
    I'm not sure what I should feel
    
    I guess I've finally had enough
    
    I don't know if this is real
    
    I'm crashing in and out of touch
    
    Can anyone please explain?

AND…of course…

Tourniquet

--Evanessence

I tried to kill the pain  
but only brought more  
I lay dying  
and I'm pouring crimson regret and betrayal  
I'm dying praying bleeding and screaming  
am I too lost to be saved  
am I too lost?  
  
my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation  
my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation  
  
do you remember me  
lost for so long  
will you be on the other side  
or will you forget me  
I'm dying praying bleeding and screaming  
am I too lost to be saved  
am I too lost?  
  
my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation  
my God my tourniquet  
return to me salvation  
  
my wounds cry for the grave  
my soul cries for deliverance  
will I be denied

Christ  
tourniquet  
my suicide

Always good songs for a good depression—Don't forget to write me…

Hope you read and enjoyed—

--MC


	12. Not Exactly Stable

Hey there,

I hope you like this new chapter; I really didn't know how I was going to go on from the last chapter, especially after everything that happened.  It's been a complicated journey, this little beloved piece of mine, and I am certainly interested to see how it's going to play out.  Don't forget to respond, I love everyone's feedback…it really convinces me that I'm doing something good here and that I should continue.  This piece is very dear to me, so thank you for the positive reinforcement.

Hope you read and enjoy,

--MC

P.S. I dedicate this chapter to everyone who was with me from the beginning, who have supported me all throughout my writing and who have prompted me to become not only a better writer but a better person.  You know who you are, but no one else does…

Rachel

Julia

Girltype

Sesshyangel

Striking Falcon

Gabby

Brooke

Thank you for everything you have given me—words cannot describe it.

-------------------------------------

_7/18/03___

_1:27 p.m.___

_I think that the movies are ruined by the actors.  I believe that the actors ruin the whole movie experience.   It is one thing when you see Johnny somebody in the movies and he plays this guy who is perfect—he is sweet and caring and he loves Anna somebody so much but he can't get her because she is blind to him being the perfect guy and all the females in the audience just gasp and melt and wish Johnny somebody would come to love them too.  However, then it just ruins this image, this wonderful image that Johnny and Anna get together and everything is wonderful when you see Johnny in a magazine and its NOT Anna he is with, it is some other girl and on top of it, nice, innocent, sweet Johnny was caught sleeping with a fourteen year old girl he drugged up after some wild after party for the movie.  And you see that Anna not only is not oblivious but she is actually some blonde-haired model for some expensive brand and in production she and Johnny actually truly hated each other and couldn't even be considered acquaintances on the other side of the camera even though they confessed their undying love to each other on the screen.  Doesn't it ever bother you, as you watch a movie that the main actor has confessed his love to ten other women, raped some man in another movie, killed his mother and also went insane?  I mean, honestly, what do you think?  I know that I like to think when a movie is over that the people in it carry on their lives happily (I mean, not ALL life is happy, but I guess they are pretty happy even though I am sure they fight sometimes—why don't people have movies about THAT—you know, when someone is actually together and then they fight but more or less they are happy—do they not do that because its incredibly boring?)  but they carry on their lives and everything is great in their land of wonderful.  But then, when you think about it THAT way…does that mean that there are about twenty John Cusacks out there with about ten other women who he is happily living out life with?  I mean, you have to think about these things and the consequences you bring to the lives of the other characters you have been when you continue to be in movies.  I mean, honestly, the woman you are marrying in this movie could have killed her husband, stalked some man, shot a dog and fell in love numerous times before you.  I don't know if I could handle that—knowing that this person has been USED…they have BEEN AROUND THE BLOCK and how do we know what they are going to do this time?  I mean, THINK about it.  REALLY.  When you think about it like that, it kind of taints the movies when there goes John Cusack (no offense John, you're cool, but you were the first name that came to my head) without Susie Nobody from Dome eleven and there goes the whole movie experience.  Honestly, I don't know who could ruin something for me more than some actor being what they aren't in the movies! I mean, has anyone ever THOUGHT that actors are perhaps the murderers and all that nonsense—all those serial killers out there—and we don't catch them because they are too rich and TOO GOOD OF ACTORS to be caught?  I mean, they PLAY characters like that in movies, who is to say that they aren't really capable of that in real life?  I mean, THINK ABOUT IT.  JUST THINK ABOUT IT.  Does anyone ever take this into account when they go to the movies?  Why aren't more people worried about this intense state of insanity that actors are in all their lives?  How can we TRUST them when we don't know if they are ACTING with us or not?  Come on now, has no one EVER thought of this?  The possibility that the actors all get together and commit the major crimes behind our backs and blame it on other harmless people who are just fucked up because they were jedi-mind-tricked by the actors themselves?  I mean, it is a VIABLE theory on what really goes on in the acting world.  WHY is there more crime in __America__?  BECAUSE there are more movie stars that are known nationally and internationally!  We have an outrageous amount of actors all with INSIDER connections that we can't even dream about.  And that is probably just the tip of the iceberg. I will just bet that it's really the actors who have been eating all that non-dolphin friendly tuna!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  How DARE they disrupt the natural order of marine life!  It's a travesty, honestly.  Come on here people.  Wake up to see the truth.  Actors are going to take over the world.  You just wait.  It might already be in motion at this very moment.  Just you wait and see, 'enry 'iggins and you'll get what you deserve.  _

_            But…when you think about it isn't that all that life is…just a bunch of people acting to be something they aren't?  I mean, to be completely cynical about life, isn't that what we are—extraordinary actors in the grand movie of life?  Just a bunch of people unaware of the consequences of hiding behind our mask, of not understanding who we really are—of living life in the sad reality that we cannot be ourselves?  Is this what we must be subject to?  So, the real question is, is life mimicking the movies, or are the movies mimicking us?  _

-------------------------------

There is this sort of clarity you receive after you try to commit suicide.  There is certainly somewhat of a regret that the deed wasn't done, but for me—it was more like a turning point.  It wasn't that I was happy about what I did, no, not at all.  Rather, as I fingered my bandages again, there was a new outlook.  I wasn't better, I wasn't changed, I just received a different vantage point from the same spot I'd been in for years.  

Certainly I couldn't be alone, Miroku had moved me into his apartment for a while—a place where I hadn't been for a long time.  As I sat around the apartment that had probably been christened many times with Miroku's trysts, I felt a little more than usually awkward being alone with him.  For some strange reason Sesshomaru's face kept swimming into my vision, as if I was somehow betraying him by sitting here, living here almost, with the man who I lost my virginity to.  That, in itself, was awkward enough for most women the man who you lost your virginity to is from some bygone days of your youth and someone who you meet on the street after you are both happily married and remember the night you gave yourselves to each other.  Even though Miroku and I weren't particularly close anymore, it was just some strange coincidence or providence even that he had showed up at my apartment that night over a week ago, we still had a relationship.  Miroku was the kind of guy you always wanted around you on retainer, he was good-looking, well-off (unless his apartment wasn't really his and he stole it or something) and when the situation was dire indeed—he was there for you.  I guess he could be characterized in the book of my life as the best friend that was overlooked or something.  Or perhaps we just had our chance way back in college and we were really only meant to be friends.  Who knows?  I don't even profess to know anything at this moment, everything is just so unclear. Its like the lines have blurred, everything is hazy and the life I had before is just a clear, still-life picture, a memory that perhaps never happened.  Or maybe my life was never ever clear, maybe the lines were always blurred and it took all this time, all these events, all these…feelings to really understand that…well, that life isn't black and white, that life is just perhaps…blue—no black and white, just haze, blue as the sky and as encompassing as the skyline.  

It's kind of funny the way things turn out.  I sat here, body hurting from scars that would never be healed on my soul, cuts so deep I might need only love to help cauterize the wound and yet all I want is someone to wrap me in their arms and tell me—that for better or for worse, they will love me until the end of their days.  It's desperately apparent to me that I need someone to tell me that I'm alright, that I need someone to assure me life is okay and that I cannot stand on my own two feet without someone there to reassure me.  Leaning on friends is alright, but being dependent hurts my stubborn, wounded nature.  

"How have I become that woman…that woman that needs a man to tell her that she is good enough?  And it isn't even sadder that once I've had that…had the reassurance that I am in fact, alright, I still won't agree?"  

"You're better than that…"  Miroku answered and I visibly recoiled from his hand reaching out to touch my face.  He was just salting the wound—he was one of the men I needed to make myself feel better.  Could I play with him that way?  Did I really like him for who he was or was it just what he stands for?  And…is that how I felt about every man I knew?  Even Inuyasha…even…even Sesshomaru?

"No, I'm not, Miroku.  I'm worse than that.  This proves it."  I pressed my palm into my wounds, prompting them to bleed through the bandage for emphasis, trying to dig in the fact that I am not the woman he thinks I am.

"Yes you are, Kagome!"  He yelled, standing from the sitting position he had previously on his reclining chair and pulled my hands away from my bandages.  "Damn it, you are better.  You were always better than all of us, especially me…"  He leaned down in front of my chair.  The semi-recumbent position scared me a little as his hand reached up to cup my face.  

"Miroku, I…"

"No.  Let me say it Kagome, even though I know you don't feel the same way.  I was never good enough for you, no one is.  Its not that you're too good or too pure, but there is something about you, this aura—you are a wonderful woman.  You're funny, fucking smart, and a little pretentious at times but you have this strange quality about you that draws people to you.  I saw it in college, I still see it…but the thing that breaks my heart is that you don't see it yourself.  You are so amazing—I mean, disease research?  Have you even _read_ what people are saying about your company?  Ever since that day when you said we should just be friends I've been trying my best to be the friend that you would need, that could help you see how amazing you are.  That night was proof I had failed.  I know that you're going through a lot right now, I know something prompted this but after everything you've accomplish, after everything you stand for—its just, Kagome, you expect, no, you demand, more from the people around you.  You don't surround yourself with superficial people or superficial relationships—you demand deeper, more understanding, more honest relationships.  And this is where I've failed you.  I haven't been completely honest with you.  Kagome, I," he took my face in both his hands, trapping my face in position.  "Kagome, I love you."

I was shocked, to say the least.  I never thought that he felt that way.  In fact, that was probably the last thing from my mind.  All throughout his speech I was imaging Sesshomaru there, confessing his love to me, about to kiss me, about to confess the desire to spend the rest of his life with me.  And yet, it was Miroku, his beautiful lips that I've always desired were descending upon mine and kissing me with an urgency I had only met once before—that day long ago when Sesshomaru came into my home and heart.  It was Miroku who was gently pulling me to my feet as we kissed, holding me tighter than I've ever been held.  I could imagine him in my minds eye, I watched him as he kissed me—his eyes closed in concentration and devotion, his lips maneuvering mine to a response and yet my heart held pity for him, not love.  I wanted to be the woman he wanted me to be for him, but it broke my heart to think that I couldn't.  Grabbing a fistful of his hair at his nape and pressing his lips to me harder than before, I kissed him for all I was worth.  

Which at the moment, wasn't much.  

I stopped kissing Miroku at that moment and brushed my hand across his face.  I would stand on my own.  I would get better.  I would heal my wounds myself the best way I know how and the only way I can.  I walked out of his apartment, alone and afraid…but stronger for having been there.  He made me see something inside myself—he truly was the friend he set out to be.

However, life wasn't perfect.  No, no…the road to recovery was hardly smooth and flat.  I struggled with myself and my inner demons constantly.  There were so many things I wanted to change, but habit had proved me incapable.  I couldn't forgive my mother for having these genes.  I couldn't forgive Martin for letting her get this bad.  I couldn't forgive God that this had happened in the first place, and worst of all, I couldn't forgive myself.  For some reason, I believed that I had been the one to tip the scale.  The little known about her disease was that they believed that it was triggered by something, and in my sadness, perhaps you could say, my own depression, I believed I was the trigger. 

The hardest thing was coming back to visit her. She was exactly the same as she was before…but it was harder to handle when even she wasn't apparent of what she had done to me.  I wasn't even aware of the immensity of my sins to myself.  She still held my hand, laughed with me and cried when we wanted her to take a shower.  I picked out her clothes, day after day…just like before, as if nothing had changed.  Had I even changed?  

My mother wouldn't eat anything.  She was getting worse and worse.  She lost so much weight that we had to force her to eat.  We came during lunch, and sat with her, feeding her the hospital food.  Sometimes she would only take a couple bites. 

Life continued with blow after blow, as we had to force my mother to have electric shock treatment.  She vehemently refused.  However, finally, she gave in and signed her warrant for this unkind treatment.

After her total lack of remembrance of me, I didn't wish to be left alone with her, for she was not my mother, and deserved none of my attention.  One day, when Martin left to do something, I was left alone with my nightmare.  She was sitting on the bed, in her own world, when she motioned for me to sit next to her.  I complied, out of habit, if anything.  She took her shaky hand and ran it across my face and through my hair.  Her eyes glazed over, and her hands cold and wrinkled, she whispered,

"Beautiful."  Her breath on my face is something I will never forget.  I, still bandaged and bruised from that horrible night, still horrifically scared from my emotional penance to my faults, I wanted to cry at this gesture.  It was scary, her frail hands were like an old woman's, the skin baggy and worn in places I never knew it could be before.  But with her comment I received something no one else could give me.  I know, in a sad sort of way, she was telling me what every daughter wanted to hear from their mother but expected that she only said it because she had to.  Her was my mother, constantly pushing me to become thinner, to be healthy, to strive for a better body…her she was telling me, fucked up Kagome, that I was beautiful.  How could that ever compare to what any man could tell me about myself…?

**_Stable_**

_I've been thinking about my future_

_About something that I want to do_

_Its not that I have something in mind or that I'm particularly confused_

_It's just something that I just need to do_

_Life hasn't always been easy for me_

_But that's just the way it goes_

_I always dreamt I'd be writing Shakespeare_

_But I'm just sittin here writing prose_

_Because life just isn't what you thought it would be_

_And trust me, it ain't no crystal stair_

_I'm not exactly stable, but I'm getting there_

_Because sometimes, life just isn't fair_

_My mother told me once_

_That I'd lost my intrinsic spark_

_It wasn't that I neither laughed nor cried_

_It was that I just hadn't made my mark_

_Because life just isn't what you thought it would be_

_And trust me, it ain't no crystal stair_

_I'm not exactly stable, but I'm getting there_

_Because sometimes, life just isn't fair_

_I've seen what its like to live in poverty_

_I've seen what its like to be free_

_I've seen everything that I'd like to see_

_And yet it's still so hard to be me_

_Maybe it's just a part of who I am_

_To be eternally abused_

_But when it's yourself that's the abuser_

_Do you ever just blow your fuse?_

_Because life just isn't what you thought it would be_

_And trust me, it ain't no crystal stair_

_I'm not exactly stable, but I'm getting there_

_Because sometimes, life just isn't _

_Because life just isn't what you thought it would be_

_And trust me, it ain't no crystal stair_

_I'm not exactly stable, but I'm getting there_

_Because sometimes, sometimes, sometimes life just isn't fair_

_But I'm getting there… oh yeah, I'm getting there_

_Just trudging up those stair's…_

_I'm getting there…_

Walking out of Miroku's apartment that day might have been one of the hardest things I ever had to do.  It wasn't because I knew I'd be breaking his heart, but it was because I knew that I could be happy there.  And it scared me to think that I could be happy with something that wasn't what I wanted and wasn't exactly right.  That I could be happy without taking the chance to strive for what was truly in my heart.  That day I didn't just walk away from a man I know I could have loved, but I walked away from the well-trodden path.

For I, I took the path less-traveled by.

And that has made all the difference.

                        --

When I got home Sesshomaru and Inuyasha had left a whole slew of messages on my machine.

Hey Kag, it's Inu. I know you heard what I said, but I just wanted to say that Paul and I, well, Paul and I are together but that doesn't mean there isn't going to be time for us.  I think I love him, I really do.  He takes care of me.  What about you? Does Sesshomaru? end message

Or my personal favorite;

Kag, pick up the damn phone.  I'm sorry that you heard about this in the most horrible fashion but that doesn't matter. My brother won't stop moping about—well, I suppose he hasn't because I haven't seen him around here since.  Do you even think you can forgive him?  I mean, he is such an idiot.  Date him once or twice and then tell him to fuck off…honestly, you deserve better.  end message

Or Sesshomaru's…

Hi…I wanted to see how you were doing.  I hope your mother is alright.  You can call me whenever…end message

Hi Kagome.  It's Sesshomaru…end message

I was listening to them for about the seventh time when there was a loud knock on my door.  Listening to see if they would go away, I pressed stop on my answering machine and walked to the door, peeking through the eyehole.

Oh god, it was Sesshomaru.

"Kag, let me in.  I need to talk to you."  Gritting my teeth I turned my back to the door, unable to let him in.  what would he say to me?  Would he tell me he loves me or is he trying to tell me we're through?  How would I respond to either of these?  Would I fight for him or would I let him go?  Is he just here to pick up his books?  Oh god, I look like a complete horror.  

"Kagome, please."  I turned to look in the eyehole once more, unable to resist the honest pleading on his face.  Opening the door slowly, I walked over and sunk into my couch, knowing that life was easier to face when comfortable.

He looked gorgeous, like a dream, like a man who I could love for the rest of my life.  He was rumpled and upset, a combination I always liked on him—it made him appear childish and delicate and hardly cold at all.  Definitely not the formidable man we all thought he was.  He was pacing in front of the couch.

"There is something I have to tell you.  You won't like it, in fact, I think you'll dislike what I have to say very much, but it must be said. I used you, Kagome and I can't forgive myself.  I used you at first because I thought that I could understand you…understand why you could, for the rest of your life be perfectly happy with loving my brother from afar, even when you were close in his arms.  How you could be safe inside his affection when it could never go above friendship.  How night after night and day after day you could sit on that couch and entertain his selfish sighings, his incapable communication skills and his sexual orientation.  I had to understand what prompted you to love him despite his flaws, despite his affiliation with the same sex, despite the fact that he could never love you in return."  He sat in front of me now, kneeling as Miroku did.  I couldn't move or speak.  He was just like the others?  "But you must listen to me.  I love you.  I fell in love with you when I began to understand you.  How could I not?  does Inuyasha know how you take your coffee?  Does he know that when you wake up in the morning you stretch your feet first and then arch your back and make the cutest groaning wake-up sound?  Does he know that when you read you laugh out loud at what you're reading and then try to explain it to whoever is around you?  I love you so much, do you understand that?"

"What the hell is your problem?"  I managed to stumble out, rising and shaking his hand away from me.  His hand brushed against a particularly bad sore spot on my stomach, one of the deepest cuts I achieved that night.  

"What did you do to yourself?" He grabbed both my arms and dragged my body to him. "Kagome, what have you done?"  

"Don't you dare change the subject," I said, yelling.  "How can you expect me to even begin to believe you when you just confessed to using me?  Did I work for your experiment?  Do you understand how I love him now?  And what about this woman you have supposedly loved forever?  Where is SHE now?"

"I've never loved anyone before you."  And that was the last straw.  Not only had he used me to somehow understand love or his brother…but he lied to me.  All those moments when I thought that I had understood him, that I thought I had found someone who was like me, who understood me and what I felt—it was gone.  No one had ever understood me.  It was all fake.  

"And you ask me why I love Inuyasha?  Well, think about it…at least he doesn't lie to me like this.  You don't understand me at all if you think that just because you love me I will take you in my arms and forgive you."  His face hardened and he looked me straight into my eyes, holding me with his piercing gaze.  For the first time, he frightened me.

"Do you know what your problem is Kagome?  Your problem is that you put people up on a pedestal.  Or more importantly, you put men up on a pedestal.  You make them better than they really are, they are illusions, and nothing can ever change your view of them because they have no faults.  And when someone real comes along, who you can't put on a pedestal, you don't understand, you don't know what to do with them.  Why does everything have to be so intense for you?  Why does everything have to be so…I don't know, so damn romantic and literature-esque?  Why can't something in your whole damn life be real?  Why don't you realize that Inuyasha isn't a real person?  Theses illusions aren't going to solve your problems and they aren't going to sweep you off your feet and make everything better. Stop being afraid of what you could have and just take it, take what you want and run with it.  The chance may never come again.  And he is gone, Kagome, he isn't coming back. They aren't going to replace your father; ever. I can't do that either, but I am offering you something more.  I am offering you something that hasn't been warped or confused. I am offering you me, me, with my temper and my possessiveness and my often introverted nature.  I'm offering you a future that will have tough times and that will have sad times but we will have happy and romantic times too.  I am not offering you forever or happily ever after but I am offering you now.  And that's the best I can do.  It's up to you to decide if it's enough.  Goodbye, Kagome."

I stood, shocked, as I distantly registered the door slamming.  I stumbled back to the couch as my heart pounded in my chest, my sobs coming out in chocking gasps.  I couldn't decide what was harder; the fact that he lied to me or the fact that he just verbalized my deepest and darkest secret—that no man I could ever have could compare to the image I created in my mind, the image of the father I had, the image of the man I want to marry—the image of an illusion.  At that moment I knew that my life was going nowhere for a reason—I hated myself.  And I created the perfect man in my mind to do the beating eternally.  

All my life I had mistaken love for simply a dream-like obsession.

Curling into a ball on the couch I rocked myself into a tearful sleep, praying that tomorrow would bring a dawn that I could look upon myself and smile.  


	13. Memory's Truths

_5/17/01___

_6:28 p.m.___

_I suppose that I could say that I don't have a favorite color either.  I mean, I guess you could say that colors could represent my life in some way.  At one point, I enjoyed pink as my favorite color—being a 70's-80's child it had to be neon pink-you know what I mean.  I guess that pink was sort of my acceptance that I was a girl and could be cute and wear those dresses and play with those Barbie's.  But then, I guess I grew out of that.  And then my favorite color became turquoise.  I was a tomboy interested in sports and the outdoors.  I hiked the __Grand Canyon__ and __Yosemite__Falls__, I hiked and trekked the Mexican rainforests in search of Mayan and Aztec ruins.  I took karate and beat the shit out of all the little boys.  I was in love with everything having to do with nature.  I surrounded myself with trees, insects, birds, animals and anything that was wild.  I read books having to do with animals.  I joined girl scouts and camped even more.  I started the tradition to camp for a couple days in Mendocino every summer with my family.  I snorkeled.  I played volleyball, soccer and softball.  _

_And then it changed.  My favorite color became maroon- much darker shade of pink mixed with red.  I began to think boys weren't the disgusting creatures they once were—only a good opponent in games at recess.  I wore dresses more often.  I quit karate.  I still played volleyball and softball.  I was fat.  I was made fun of.  I cried a lot, hurt and alone.  I never told anyone.  Knives and Clorox became my new best friends.  My parents never knew. My father died.  And then I lost it.  And my favorite color became red—red like blood.  It was a summer that would never end.  And then it finally did. My favorite color was still red.  _

_I was still fat, but red that stood for only blood changed and some love mixed in.  It was two different guys, both that hurt me.  But the red was being overtaken by love.  It was growing inside me more and more everyday.  It wasn't love for anyone else anymore.  It was a love for myself, for my body, and for my life.  _

_And now my favorite color is anything that represents life.  I know what death looks like-and it isn't white.  A good friend once said that white is a blank canvas—something you can make entirely your own and paint it with all the colors you want.  I guess that is what my canvas is.  It is plain white, starting out and new beginnings.  Change.  It has my previous colors there too, but a major part is still white.  I still have a long time ahead of me to paint it any color I want.  And I am not afraid anymore._

-----------------------------------------------------

After everything I had decided to take advantage of my holiday and do what I do best: ponder.  I know, you were probably thinking shopping, but honestly, a credit card isn't every girl's best friend.  (Although mine is a close acquaintance, alright?)  But that is what I did.  I went out with my journal and took to this place that I always go to.  And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote.  I was going to sit on this rock that I usually sit on but it was already occupied.  Two lovers.  I should have guessed the world would like to spite me so.

Today is a momentous occasion.  Today I am totally honest when I write in my journal, instead of lying about what I really think about myself.  I am honest. I tell the absolute tuth: I am a very confused and lonely person.  You should know that about me.  I tease and I laugh and I smile but I truly hurt inside.  I don't know why I can't be happy.  I seriously don't.  I mean, I've been through shit but for some reason I can't forgive myself for past mistakes.  I carry them with me.  Everywhere.  I don't want anyone to turn out like me.  The head on my shoulders is teetering in any direction and I am afraid it's going to fall.  Just please don't let your heart freeze up like mine.  Always stay warm.  

I guess that I am the best actress in the world.  I only tell people what they want to hear so they'll leave me alone in my pondering solitude.  No one has truly met me, the real me that I keep hidden inside so well.  I keep it all locked away in a safe that cannot be opened.  Only I know the combination.  And I forgot it long ago.  

The lovers have left the rock, laughing and smiling.  I don't know if I can ever do that.  They looked so happy and free together.  Sometimes I want to be free.  But I can't take the risk.  I really am a coward inside.  

It would be easier if I wasn't such a thoughtful person, but I think too much for my own good.  I over analyze and am too ignorant of the real world to understand anything.  That's how I feel, but we all know that I have a penchant for exaggeration.  

The wind rustles around me and the birds are calling.  My shoulders and back are tense.

This is why I read these happy stories and why I cannot stand unhappy endings.  My life is unhappy—and I don't want to read my life.  

An old man runs by.  I wonder what his life is like.  Does he run to get away from it all like I read?  Do you think things would be easier if I was a skinny girl as a child with a great figure?  Do you think that life would be more fun?  Do you think I'd make different choices, meet different people and be totally different myself?  

I mean, being fat makes you mature faster and you develop your personality sooner.  It shapes you differently than if you had to just wear anything and shop anywhere and you would look great.  I don't know if being fat makes you a better person or just a more thoughtful person.  Because it certainly doesn't make you a popular person.  Or a sought after person.  Or a person a gorgeous man would want to be with…

A woodpecker drinks from a bowl by the side of the water fountain.  He looks around and spies me watching him, squirrels and birds alike flock to the little watering bowl on this mildly hot day.  

This animal is thirsty too.

The old man runs by again, breathing hard.  This is the third time he has finished the loop.  I want to go home but I want to be alone.  I want to sit in my childhood room and just remember who I used to be.  I don't want to be bothered by anyone calling and asking me if I am okay.  I want to be alone today.  

The old man doesn't run by again but I know by the time I leave he will.  I am still tense and confused and lonely but this is natural to me now.  At least I am finally being honest about it.  So, I finish my journaling as my hair whips around my face from the wind.  

_11/3/94___

_9:17 p.m.___

_But I think this is where I am right now.  I am on the cusp of the unknown.  I am teetering on the edge of childhood and almost ready to plunge into the great abyss that is adulthood.  I can't even imagine what will become of me then.  If I died tomorrow, I wouldn't ever experience my future, this great, vast beauty of the rest of my life.  I think that if I died tomorrow, today I would just lie my head down on my pillow and weep.  I wouldn't weep for my death; I would weep for my life.  I would cry because life is so short and beautiful.  I would cry because I never found that love of my life, had my first kiss, drank beer, have the pleasure of turning into my parents with age, and dying old.  I would have cried because I wasted my best years on just red, blood red fury and anger and craziness.  I mean, you don't know me very well.  I've experienced things kids my age shouldn't.  I have experienced tragedy and have come out a person who I can look in the mirror every morning and actually like.  If I died tomorrow, then I wouldn't have the chance to look in the mirror once last morning and just smile.  After what I've been through I think that would be the thing I would miss the most if I died.  Being able to really know that I am who I am because I made myself who I am.  _

_After I finished crying I would dry my tears and take a shower.  It would be a slow shower, not really washing but just letting the water wash over my body and pound into my back with its intensity.  After that I would change and go climb on my roof.  I would then lie on my roof and stare at the stars all night.  I wouldn't think about anything, really, but thoughts would periodically run through my mind.  I would write them down, of course, it is my habit.  I write down anything I think of just in case I could ever use it in an essay at some point in time.  Which helps a lot, because I recycle a lot of things I have previously written in my writings.  It is strange how things connect.  I write about something, I just get this inspiration to write about it, and then I get an assignment on it.  Sometimes it is immediately after I wrote it.  Sometimes it is a year or two later.  But it always happens.  It is just so strange.  So I would write something that perhaps if I wasn't dying I would use later.  Then I would get down and wake up my mother.  I would tell her I loved her and then sleep on the side of her bed like I used to when I was a kid.  My mother would hold my hand while we slept and I would be comforted by her touch.  When I wake up, it is the early morning, before anyone is up.  I never get up this early.  I hate waking up early.  It means you have something to do that day.  I would then sit down on the computer and write something totally inspired by my soon to be demise.  It wouldn't be a goodbye letter to anyone in particular, but it would be widely circulated to my friends and family.  And then, as the first light pierced through the darkness of the night, I would walk to my mirror and smile.  And at that moment, outside under the __Laurel__ tree, I would curl up, next to the grave where I buried my rat, Monty. My cat would be curled up in my lap.  He never sits in my lap but he would do it now. He would purr as I scratched his ears.  Then, when I stopped he would look at me with his big black and yellow eyes and know that I was dead.  He would get up and nuzzle my neck and meow.  And then he would walk away from me because he knows I am not there anymore.  He would find his way to my room and lay sprawled in the middle of my bed.  It's his bed now.  And then across the world, somewhere in another country, someone will wake up, look at them self in the mirror, and smile_.  

After everything that has been happening—my mother, Sesshomaru, Miroku and Inuyasha…I still think about myself.  Amazing.  I mean, I know that I need to work through my problems first, but honestly, I can't believe it.  But then, but then I realize it as I am sitting on top of my rock just for old times sake.  I finally realize something important about myself.  About Inuyasha.  About Sesshomaru.  About Miroku.

Sesshomaru has been right all along. About everything.  About my feelings for Inuyasha.  About my feelings for him.  And I realize my problem.  I love Inuyasha too much.  But it isn't a healthy love.  It isn't a love that can be requited, first of all.  But most importantly, most most most importantly, it isn't a love that I can be comfortable in.  For some unknown reason I have always felt as if Inuyasha was above me, better than me.  Even before I knew he was gay I never thought I deserved someone like him.  I never thought I could be with someone like him.  And it made me guilty.  It made me vulnerable and god damnit, it made me a carpet.  It made me Inuyasha's doormat so he could walk over me any time he liked.  And there I was, sitting there on the ground saying, "Please, please, just wipe your feet one more time, okay?"  I became so dependent on his opinion and thoughts that I could barely get out of the house without consulting what I thought he would like and enjoy. I became his bloody lap dog and I, I became a shadow of my other self.  The self that was not entirely confidant, but on her way there.  The self that was, if not comfortable with herself and her body yet, sure as hell getting there pretty quickly.  

_2/1/02___

_10:01 p.m.___

_Ah.  My favorite animal.  I would have to say my favorite animal is a penguin.  I love penguins.  They are so unbelievably cute it hurts.  If I ever see one I will have to be physically restrained from picking it up and taking it home.  This is probably a good thing because it would most likely peck my eyes out and I personally like my eyes, thank you.  However, I also like that the penguins mate for life.  I mean, that is something that I am afraid about.  I don't want to get divorced ever.  When I marry, I want to be absolutely certain that that man is the man who will stand by me for the rest of our lives. I don't think I could handle divorce.  I know it happens a lot, but I made a promise to take care of that man for the rest of my life and I don't want to break it.  So I guess I just need to wait.  This is probably smart.  I mean, rushing into things never got you anywhere.  And then, opening up a whole other can of worms, I worry that I won't ever find that one person.  You know.  Your soul mate.  Is there really such a thing?  Is there such a person where it hurts to be without them and you love them so much you would do anything for them?  Someone who you could have children with and be happy with for the rest of your life?  Is it really possible?  I mean, I want what my parents had.  Yes they fought and yes they weren't always nice to each other.  But, they didn't want to get divorced.  Far from it.  They loved each other immensely.  I mean, I just saw it when I was around them and felt it when I was near them.  I mean, I want that.  I want their happiness.  I want to have that comfort that the person I love so much loves me back equally.  Sigh Is that too much to ask, do you think?  I just wrote an essay on that.  It was on Cyrano de Bergerac and how he symbolized the need in everyone to find their soul mate and how our insecurities about our bodies and ourselves hold us back from accomplishing that.  I think that would be something that I would actually regret.  Finding my soul mate and then loosing them somehow.  What if I already met him?  What if he died in a car accident?  Is there only one soul mate for you?  _

But Sesshomaru was wrong about one thing.  He was wrong that I would be independent if Inuyasha wasn't in my life.  But that wasn't true.  I was dependent on him now--Sesshomaru.  He was my Inuyasha replacement and it scared me because I knew it was true.  He was just there to replace Inu while he was in France.  And then it hit me.  That was why I wasn't really bothered when he kissed me and touched me.  Because if Inu suddenly did those things I sure as hell wouldn't mind either.  And since he was replacement Inu that meant that my feelings had been transferred over for the time being.  But Inu was safe.  He would never do anything like that with me.  But Sesshomaru would. Because he is heterosexual.  In essence, he isn't safe.  Because I could get hurt.  And that was the biggest blow of them all.  I had gotten myself into a precarious situation where someone could hurt me.  Badly, horrendously, permanently and heartbreakingly.  After all these years of steering clear of pain and heartache I had unwittingly delved into it again.  I felt so out of breath.  And suddenly I was so scared.  I was so scared that someone could have this much power over me and I had to fight the urge to throw up over the side of the rock.  

He had created a monster.

_7/13/96___

_9:42 p.m.___

_When reading Frankenstein now, I was suddenly struck with a horrific and terrible image. What if this monster, this "creation," was what we all hold inside ourselves? What if, as children, we were cast from society, from love, from anything we know as comfort and left to fend for ourselves in the wilderness--in the wilderness where you take what you can get, you fight for your life and you cannot help but kill those who oppose you--it is life and death? How would you react, if presented with a creature that was human, what would you do? They would despise you as the disgusting being that you are but instead they truly abhorred the disgusting nature of themselves. I suppose that we all have this inside ourselves, we are all capable of murder, of survival...but society and religion and bonds of love and friendship has changed our perceptions of "survival of the fittest" and now created a world where the meek are strong and the strong are stronger. What has our world become other than the result of morality and this innate feeling of what is RIGHT and what is WRONG. We know as children that killing is wrong and yet children still kill plants, birds, squirrels, ants and bugs to satisfy their curiosity of the secrets of life. The monster is simply the child in us, but unfortunately for him his curious soul was not encased in a delicate, precious body of a child--one which no creator or parent can resist. How disturbing is this tale of woe now when you read from the perception that we are all, in essence, the monster--the monster embraces this side of him because he knows not better and yet we deny that part of yourself because it is what we are TOLD is right and wrong by a religious background. We know wither this is right or wrong now. What if, by denying our baser instincts, we are undoing the world, we are creating a world in which one being, the meeker being in body and strength is the leader, the forefront of all thought and morality. How can we say what is superior and what is inferior? How can we decide between the savagery of our past and the sophistication of our present? Although many would jump to the present, we must realize that this is something we cannot decide--we were not left in the wild to fend for ourselves. And yet the monster, when he leaves Frankenstein's apartment takes great care in clothing himself before he leaves the premises but then lives in the wild as the poor wretch he claims himself to be. I am not surprised, that when surrounded by animals of the wild, the monster was influenced by their ways of life. A child mimics what the parent does and learns from observation. With the absence of his creator, the monster was left to observe anything he could set his eyes upon, be that animal or nature. So I do not think that perhaps it is terrible that a monster such as this resides inside ourselves, rather the thought that if we really had a choice, what side of ourselves would we choose?_

Sesshomaru.  Could I really go to him and tell him how I felt?  Could I really go back on what I've been thinking and tell him that he really has taken part of me with him—that when he left I left with him.  In a sad, pathetic way, but I did leave with him.  to be completely contrite and "literature-esque," I left with him.  but that isn't what he is-he is not literature-esque.  He isn't perfect and…I like it. And as I said that my confidence rose a bit.  What would I choose?

I've been thinking of things so much lately…things have been flashing before my eyes, things I haven't thought of for a really long time.  Things that I was sure I had forgotten in the annals of my mind and that I could never get back—lost in the abyss that is the brain.  But things were getting clearer and fuzzier at the same time.  Through the haze, the thoughts I can only have one clear thought…

_7/8/96___

_6:32 p.m.___

_So I'm reading Frankenstein and I actually think it's a really good waste of my time. I mean, one cannot certainly sit here and read books without liking them and I, as previously stated, like this book. Perhaps it could be the fact that Victor is so much regretful and torturous over his position that he cannot really understand how to feel any type of happiness. Is that how people really feel? They cannot be alright with themselves because they cannot forget the past, the mistakes, the embarrassments, the idiotic things they've done--everything, in essence? How can one feel that way, honestly, when you think about it? I mean, should we seize the day, live life as if it were our last and yet we have our memories, yes some are happy and joyful, but a large amount are also proof of the ridiculous in ourselves. How is that our past mistakes shape our lives in the future and yet it is BECAUSE of our past mistakes and mishaps that we cannot rise to another day with the confidence borne of yesterday. We, as children, do not touch the hot pan after we have burned and after we make a mistake we are very unlikely to reproduce the same situation to embarrass ourselves again. Are we all like Victor--trapped in our past mistakes, trapped inside ourselves, unable to escape the most excruciating torture that we can inflict upon ourselves--the simple remembrance of horrible decisions and past hurts and pains? How do humans, as a whole, survive, manage to live in a world where everyone who is coherent has at least a handful of disgusting events hidden inside their closets? Or is that the most successful people in life are people who manage to overcome this exquisite torture and are able to forget and disregard their past and live each day as if it were their last, like yesterday didn't matter and tomorrow was simply a chapter far ahead in their book of life? Memories, hurts and embarrassments haunt us all, haunt our minds as we go through our daily routines, show us what life really isn't when disguised behind the wet transparent newspaper print of our past years. And when you think of this torture, of this disgusting folly that is memory, can you also realize that this is all self-inflicted, all the cut from our own knife held in our own hand unable to even stop the past blood from flowing as we make ourselves a new cut into the skin of yesterday? However, as I look upon the "exquisite torture" of my life, I cannot help but say that this is not something that I could live without--it is true that we learn from our mistakes--in essence, our mistakes shape us as who we are and what we shall become in the ever-rejuvenating and changing life-world around us all. So I suppose the real question is not whether we are aware of what we are doing to ourselves, rather, if we had the choice, would we stop it? _

One clear thought shines through the din.  It's a bit hazy and it's a bit fuzzy, but its there nonetheless behind everything, behind the curtain of despair.  I don't know why I kept thinking about—

_3/3/99___

_2:46 a.m.___

_Transitions _

_Juggling bowling balls, oranges_

_He could do anything_

_I slept in his accordion box_

_While he played—_

_Slouching in the wooden rocking chair_

_Back and forth, back and forth_

_I laughed, spiritedly, loudly_

_His face crinkles when he smiles_

_He picks me up and swings me around and around_

_Trees blur in my vision_

_The seagulls laugh in my ear as I dance_

_The fire crackling as I crawl into the van_

_Roasting marshmallows, bugs_

_Finding slugs and frogs_

_My hand bleeds as a parrot fish swims away_

_Lighting candles, she laughs, eyes bright _

_She hugs me close, holding me tight_

_Piles and piles of books surround her_

_Important papers, letters, scribblings, crayons_

_Paints, splatters, art protég_

_It lines the walls, rooms, floor—littering_

_Keepsake memories, she never throws away_

_Leaves swirl, rain falls, my eyes grow darker_

_Curtains sweep swiftly across my face—_

_Push away the shadows, they drift away_

_I somehow forget the only thing I wanted to stay_

_Standing tall, alert, my laugh is gentle_

_The seagulls caw to the night sky_

_I distance myself, across the sand_

_It can't reach me_

_Hands, reaching out, gathering me close_

_But I'm already gone_

I clutched my head.  I couldn't even get one thought—

_11/23/03___

_12:01 a.m.___

_Memory_

_Why did everyone seem like a better fit?_

_You never did like my quick wit_

_Was I not enough to keep around?_

_Or was it all just lost and found?_

_Funny how an idea pops into your head_

_The memory is heavy as lead_

_Some things I must write down_

_Or was it all just lost and found?_

_I didn't want to forget_

_Your face melt into regret_

_My conscience seems to have won this round_

_Or was it all just lost and found?_

_Carelessness was a virtue_

_When I compared myself to you_

_Keeping photographs that have browned_

_Or was it all just lost and found?_

_Markets crashed behind my door_

_Unable to prostrate myself on the floor_

_I've tried to build myself a mound_

_Or was it all just lost and found?_

_Important thoughts drilled into my brain_

_Colliding faster than a train_

_Kept awake at night by the sound_

_Or was it all just lost and found?_

_Parachuting to my death_

_I barely even took a breath_

_Queen of cumulus nimbus I was crowned_

_Or was it all just lost and found?_

_Opening eyes to what I thought was real_

_Life is a joke compared to what I feel_

_Honestly everything of what I am has drowned_

_Or was it all just lost and found?_

_I had to remember what you said_

_Before your memory faded to dead_

_Black and white litters the ground_

_I've just become lost and found_

"ALRIGHT!" I yelled, standing on top of the rock.  "I realize there is some stuff going on here I can't control, I realize that I am not well, I realize that life is not fair!  I realize that life cannot be a fantasy!  I REMEMBER!  I KNOW!  I am just a human like everyone else and shit happens!"

_"Do you know I like the sick spiral I'm down?"_

"_Life does the craziest __things sometimes."_

_"It's hard to live."___

_"How will I ever know if I am truly alive?"_

"_We're not living in the real world_."

"_Consciously."_

 "_We are about to embark on the journey that is a part of our life—a journey that will take us to where we are supposed to be."_

_"I want my happy ending."_

"_Why does being safe feel like it's killing you inside?"_

_"Reality check: it doesn't."_

_"When do you get to the point where enough is enough and you realize life isn't a book and life isn't a fairytale?"_

_"Or maybe my life was never ever clear, maybe the lines were always blurred and it took all this time, all these events, all these…feelings to really understand that…well, that life isn't black and white, that life is just perhaps…blue—no black and white, just haze, blue as the sky and as encompassing as the skyline."_

"Wake up and see the truth."  

------------------------------------

Stay tuned for the next installment.  Next chapter is the last chapter!  cries  I am so attached to this story, I don't want it to end.  Who knows what I'll do next.  Sheesh.  Remember to drop me a line…

Hope you read and enjoyed,

--MC


	14. The Brilliant Opener

Dear Sesshomaru,

Destination is a funny thing. You are at a place one moment, and then gone from it in the next. Every second you are in a different place, a different destination. Or perhaps it isn't your destination, but simply a stop on the road of your quest. You can go back to a place, revisit is numerous times, but you can never recapture the same exact moment. Something's always different, always changing. Perhaps you wore your hair down last time, or instead of sandals, you wore shoes. But other than the physical aspects, you are emotionally changed as well. Perhaps you were a year younger, had your first kiss, or drank beer. Somehow you are always different. Even standing here changes me, changes you. It may not be a large change, but we have changed. Every second you change, every thought is a new perspective based on your new surroundings or experiences. You change in the littlest way possible, like a freckle on your hand, or in a large way, such as an experience to a foreign country. Every single thing you do changes you in some way, shapes your totally individual worldview, and brings you into your own person. You have your ideals, your partners on the journey, and even some bumps. But life still goes on. You breathe, you react, you live, without change, life ceases to exist, from the simple shedding of leaves, or the birth of a baby. It all changes. 

And I guess that's what I love about life. I mean, if it didn't change then what would we do? How would we cope, adapt…evolve…live? I mean, life changes constantly—it's changing right now as I think! It honestly boggles the mind. How can something that is SO constant in life and yet changes the details every hour, minute, second? Why doesn't the world fold over on itself and explode?

When you think back on your life, you never really think about the small things that got you to the place you are. And I guess, well, I guess for me, it all boils down to a hot afternoon and some iced tea. And I guess that kind of depresses me. Well, perhaps not depress, but it makes me think a little. It reminds me that after one moment, my life was inexplicably changed from what it was into something, something new and…well, different, for lack of a better term. I guess I never really realized until now that different is so bad. I mean, I sit back and I think that different is scary and that change is horrible, but what else could have brought me this new perspective other than change? I know it seems kind of trivial to sit here and muse about life after I was so fixated on death and yet, and yet I still don't know if death was what I was going for. My physical wounds may have been healed (almost) but it doesn't mean that I couldn't have physically killed myself numerous times. I was capable. But I think the whole point of that wasn't to physically kill myself, but to have an emotional suicide. To not feel ANYTHING, to never be heart again, to never be forgotten, to never BE anything, was my goal. And that is something that scares me even more than everything else because I pride myself on what I've accomplished, memories I have and experienced I've shared. Isn't that what life is all about? Emotions are what life is all about, they make us humans able to smile, laugh, cry, sigh and worry at any given memory. I can't go all Nietzsche on my ass and just forget to feel the emotions attached to my memories because why deny your feelings? Why deny something you felt, as if you are ashamed? Because even though I've done some stupid things in my life, it doesn't make me ashamed or regretful. They were my experiences, I own them, I fashioned them myself. One could say they are the only thing I truly own out of everything I have. They are something completely and individually mine, my memories. Something that I can never truly get rid of, something I can never truly forget, something for that one moment, I can go back in time and be in that moment. And that is a truly amazing thing that we can do. I wasn't cutting my skin, I was cutting my soul. My skin healed…but the real question was if my soul had healed. I don't really know the answer to that, but right now, I'm alright with it. I have time.

My mother left the hospital the other day. She wasn't fully recovered, but the doctors said that she was on the road to recovery and home would probably be a better (and less expensive) option. Taking her home had been another memory. She was aware, she remembered things, she held my hand like she used to. But she was different. I don't know if she will ever be the same again. Ever. But like I said, different isn't bad. I just keep comparing, keep comparing memories and new insights and everything. But I love her, god do I love her. She is the most special thing to me, if only she knew. Perhaps one day I will tell her when she is better enough to understand what she means to me. And perhaps one day I will tell her the pain. Perhaps one day I'll tell everyone. But for now it's between me, my soul and Miroku. 

Miroku told me once that I don't know how to have a real relationship. I guess he was right, in a way. I don't really know how to do anything anymore. It seems as if my life was just stuck in this never-ending perpetuating cycle of heartbreak and discomfort and harassment. I could have done anything with my life, I could have gone anywhere and yet I stayed here, I stayed with Inuyasha; I STAYED with him, someone who could have never loved me back. Everything was true that you said, everything. I protected myself, I hid myself, I held myself back from anything. I had countless opportunities denied because of my love for lack of change. But I forgot to realize that it doesn't matter. Things DO change. Change is constant, shit is inevitable, but grace is always accepted. I forgot that. I forgot that for my life to be better, for my life to have any sort of meaning, I had to change it, I had to fashion it myself. I had to own my life and believe in myself, in a totally corny way. Yes, I had to finally take charge of what I wanted and go for it. Which is why I'm going away. I'm taking a trip, I've won it, you could say. I won't tell you where I'm going, but I'll be back. I'll always come back. Because there are still things that I need to change here. There is just one more thing I have to do before I leave. I think you might know what that is. 

Until then, Sesshomaru.

Love, Kagome

--------------------------

We sat at a table together, alone in a corner of the café. It was a typical Parisian type, sitting on a corner and specializing in secluded tables for two. He smiled at me, a shy smile of warmth and happiness that spoke of so many experiences that had not yet faded into memory. And if I could I would put those experiences in a bottle that I would carry with me for the rest of my life. Not close to my heart, but wrapped up in my pocket, where I could take it out on occasions and perhaps let people understand for just one instant the emotion that could not be contained. To this day, I won't ever forget the lines of his face as he spoke those immortal words…

"So, you trusted Sesshomaru all this time?"

--------------------

The princess stepped off the sepulcher and into the great abyss to the land of beyond; a future where happy endings were fictional and where true life—hurt, pain, passion and intensity drew into one and burst into an eternal flame or fireball of life that surrounds humanity in the after-affecting glow. At least that was what I'd write in my journal. But the truth of the situation was that I was alive, and for the first time I wasn't seeing anything tinted with rose-colored glass or scrambled through the din of flowery writing, even though literarily speaking, life like that isn't so bad after all. 

The leaves rustled in the wind as it swirled fallen reminisces of the trees in its embrace. He was waiting for me, I knew. But more importantly I was waiting for myself. I felt as if my mad story was being written anew, the almighty writer's pen swiftly gliding across the page as the white void of my book of life filled with something no one else could ever read or even understand, or at least not until the inevitable happened and humankind finally found the key to unlock the final vestiges of the human soul. 

The End.

--------------------------------------------------

Ya. That's the end. It doesn't have a romantic love affair or a dramatic love declaration scene. Does Kagome love Sesshomaru? Or is it Miroku she loves? Who was the man she was talking to? Inuyasha? Miroku? 

Who cares. Think whatever you want. This story wasn't about the love, the love story was a catalyst into the real plot—Kagome's life, her discovery of herself. And that is all that matters. I'm sorry to disappoint people, but that's what I needed to do. It's what the characters lead me to write, what I felt was true. This story has been many things to me and I don't feel I could disgrace it by ending typically on a note of fevered love and desire. In Sess we trust. He is nothing but an enigma, so deconstruct your enigmas without my help. I'm done. This might be my last story of ff.net, it could go either way. After this work, something frivolous with meaningless fluff seems pointless after everything I've tried to accomplish here. Lately I've been feeling a little annoyed at fanfiction in general. I guess it feels weird that a story which has lots of sex and romance and everything is celebrated as genius. I don't know, I just don't know anymore. I hope you enjoyed my brief interlude into some reality. You can go back to your fluff, your romance, your sex now. I won't detain you any longer. I guess life is better, like Kagome thought, when its all "literature-esque." Who wants reality anyways? 


End file.
